The mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese Communist Party yesterday carried a rare denunciation of retired leaders’ continued influence, fueling speculation over how far Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) anti-graft campaign can go.
Xi’s much-publicized drive against corruption has ensnared a long list of senior and junior officials, including the country’s former security czar Zhou Yongkang (周永康), who was sentenced to life in jail in June.
Zhou is regarded as an ally of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民), who ruled from 1989 to 2002, but is believed to have retained significant power throughout the following decade, under Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
Speculation has circulated over whether Jiang could be targeted by Xi and the party’s internal investigation branch, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).
In February, the CCDI posted an article online about princely corruption during the Qing Dynasty, seen as alluding to Zeng Qinghong (曾慶紅), a former Chinese vice president and Jiang’s right-hand man.
Yesterday’s People’s Daily commentary lambasted unnamed “retired leaders” for clinging to power and causing rifts within the party.
“Some leaders not only installed their cronies [in key positions] to create conditions for them to wield influence in future, but also wanted to intervene in the major issues of the organization they formerly worked for, even many years after they retired,” it said.
Such actions made new leaders feel that their “hands and feet” were fettered by having to work within “unnecessary concerns,” it added.
They “also made some organizations ... split up into groups and become demoralized... undermining the party’s cohesion and capabilities,” the commentary written by Gu Bochong (顧伯沖) said.
Gu is an officer with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Political Department, according to the Web site of the China Writers’ Association, of which he is a member.
The People’s Daily did not provide of description of Gu, although it did so for all the other contributors to its “Theory” page, which appears every weekday.
The article compared a leader’s retirement to the waning temperature of a hot drink.
“The tea must cool after the guest leaves, otherwise it will go bad,” it said. “It should become a norm that when you leave office, you leave your opinions behind.”
The metaphor sparked a wave of allusions on Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo (新浪微博).
“What if the ginger tea just wants to stay as hot as before?” asked one poster. “In that case, it has to be poured away!”
In Mandarin Chinese, ginger is pronounced jiang.
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