China’s central leadership has moved to bolster control over the southwestern city-province of Chong-qing after ousting its contentious yet popular chief, Bo Xilai (薄熙來), with state-run media yesterday urging officials and residents there to toe the line.
The demands for unity with the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s central leadership appeared in Chongqing newspapers that did not even mention Bo, who was removed this week after a scandal when his vice mayor, Wang Lijun (王立軍), took refuge in a US consulate last month until he was coaxed out and put under investigation.
Until that episode, Bo was widely seen as an ambition-fuelled contender for a spot in the next central leadership to be settled late this year. However, now the message to Chongqing officials and residents amounts to: Forget about Bo, even if he was China’s most high-profile province-level leader.
The Chongqing Daily reported that city officials on Friday effectively pledged loyalty to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Chongqing’s new boss, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang (張德江).
“All unanimously declared that they will sincerely embrace the central leadership’s decision on adjusting the municipality party committee’s leader and handling the Wang Lijun case,” the paper reported of a meeting of Chongqing officials.
“Do not disappoint the sincere expectations of the central leadership,” the officials were told, according to the report.
The failure to even mention Bo Xilai by name in state media was another sign of the fall from grace for a man who, unusually among China’s poker-faced leaders, reveled in publicity.
After arriving in Chongqing in 2007, Bo, 62 and a former commerce minister, turned it into a bastion of Communist revolutionary-inspired “red” culture and egalitarian growth, winning national attention with a crackdown on organized crime.
His self-promotion and revival of Mao Zedong (毛澤東)-inspired propaganda irked moderate officials.
However, his populist ways and crime clean-up were welcomed by many residents and others who hoped Bo could try his policies nationwide.
Chongqing newspapers said residents promptly embraced Bo’s successor.
“The broad mass of Chongqing residents resolutely support the central leadership’s decision and sincerely welcome Comrade Zhang Dejiang coming to work here,” the Chongqing Daily said.
“They are full of hope in Chongqing’s future development,” it added.
Many residents of the riverside city, however, voiced dismay at the dumping of Bo.
“It’s hard for us to understand this,” said Xia Hao, a businessman in his thirties. “The problem is that Chongqing had party secretaries before who came and left, like Wang Yang (汪洋) and He Guoqiang (賀國強), but nothing about the city changed much then.”
“But after Bo Xilai came here, we could see and feel all the changes, so people don’t understand what he did that was so wrong,” he said.
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
Outside Havana, a combine belonging to a private Vietnamese company is harvesting rice, directly farming Cuban land — in a first — to help address acute food shortages in the country. The Cuban government has granted Agri VAM, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s Fujinuco Group, 1,000 hectares of arable land in Los Palacios, 118km west of the capital. Vietnam has advised Cuba on rice cultivation in the past, but this is the first time a private firm has done the farming itself. The government approved the move after a 52 percent plunge in overall agricultural production between 2018 and 2023, according to data
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
RSS