The governor of a major Chinese province has been accused of disloyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and removed from his post, amid a growing consolidation of power by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that some have likened to a personality cult.
Deposed Sichuan Governor Wei Hong (魏宏) joins a long list of those sidelined in a sweeping crackdown on dissent, civil society and corrupt officials.
Unusually, the accusations against Wei made no mention of graft. He was accused only of violating “party discipline,” not of breaking the law, demoted to a vice departmental post and removed from his party duties.
Photo: AP
Wei had been “disloyal to the party, dishonest and failed to value the many opportunities to receive education and rectify his wrongdoing,” the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in an unusually long statement on its Web site.
Along with “seriously violating political and organizational discipline,” he also sought to subvert the investigation, refused to confess and interfered with judicial activities, the commission said.
No details were given about the specific accusations against Wei, who had spent most of his career in the Sichuan party apparatus and was also a delegate to the national party and government congresses.
The commission also announced an investigation into a vice governor of the southern province of Guangdong on the same charge. It said Liu Zhigeng (劉志庚) was under investigation, but gave no details about his alleged violation of party discipline.
The accusations appear to show an expansion of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign to include those who fail to profess fealty to his leadership personally, said Willy Lam (林和立), who closely follows China’s elite politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Whereas previous leaders had tolerated some degree of factionalism, Xi appears intent on removing all who would fail to toe the line, Lam said.
Wei may have been suspected of being under the sway of one of Xi’s two predecessors, Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), he said.
“This is a warning to party members that they can lose their place,” Lam said. “It is an alarming development in the personality cult around Xi.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in