Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Hu made the call yesterday in his first joint public appearance with Jiang since the Sept. 24 dismissal of Chen Liangyu (
"We should resolutely maintain and strengthen solidarity of the whole party," Hu told a gathering at Beijing's Great Hall of the People marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the epic Long March by Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) Communist forces during China's long civil war.
State television broadcast Hu's speech live. It showed footage of both Hu and Jiang but not of them standing together.
Cool relations
The pair have had cool relations for several years. Analysts say Jiang feels that Hu has dimmed his achievements and influence in a drive to steer China's development away from the booming east coast, including Shanghai, to poor inland regions.
Sources said Jiang had agreed to Chen's removal in order to protect other political allies and relatives under investigation.
Beijing has sent more than 100 anti-corruption investigators to Shanghai to investigate money reportedly drained from the city's 10 billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) social security fund for illicit loans and investments.
As a result, Chen was dismissed as Shanghai party boss and lost his seat in the 24-member Politburo, the first member of the party's decisionmaking body to be sacked since 1995 when the Beijing party chief Chen Xitong (陳希同) was purged and jailed for corruption.
"We should consciously resist money worship, hedonism and extreme individualism and other negative decadent erosion of ideology and culture," Hu said.
Crackdown
As part of the crackdown, authorities have detained one of China's wealthiest men in the first formal arrest linked to Shanghai's snowballing pension fund scandal.
Tycoon Zhang Rongkun (張榮坤) -- ranked the 16th richest man in China by Forbes magazine last year -- was arrested by "relevant law enforcement authorities," his own firm Fuxi Investment Holding Co said in a brief announcement released on Saturday.
Zhang, 33, had reportedly been under house arrest since July for his alleged part in the disappearance of 3.2 billion yuan belonging to the municipality's retirement fund.
Fuxi did not list the charges levelled against Zhang.
But previous state press reports said the former textile trader, who made his fortune in toll roads, had been under investigation over unauthorized real estate and highway investment deals involving approximately US$400 million which were allegedly siphoned off from Shanghai's pension fund.
In August, Zhang was dismissed from his post as a non-executive director of Shanghai Electric Group Co over the scandal.
Six days ago he lost his seat on the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Earlier this month, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, Qiu Xiaohua (
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of