The investigation of the top leader in China’s northern port of Tianjin comes amid a nationwide reshuffle of provincial leadership posts and could add uncertainty to the Chinese Communist Party’s mid-term power transfer next year.
Tianjin Mayor and acting party chief Huang Xingguo (黃興國) is being probed for “serious disciplinary violations,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s top anti-graft agency, said on Saturday, using a euphemism for corruption.
The commission statement provided no details about the nature of the allegations.
The move could have broader implications since past leaders of Tianjin — less than an hour’s train ride from Beijing and one of four centrally administered municipalities — have held seats on the party’s elite 25-member politburo. The post was already among the most closely watched as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) reassigns provincial posts ahead next year’s party congress.
As many as 11 members of the politburo — including five of the seven on its supreme Standing Committee — are expected to retire at the twice-a-decade congress. A party plenary session in Beijing next month is expected to help lay the groundwork for that event.
“Tianjin is an important battle ground and the position of its party chief is directly decided by the central leadership,” said Qiao Mu (喬木), a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University and a political commentator.
Huang’s case pointed to jostling going on before the party congress, Qiao said.
CCP officials have usually been detained when disciplinary investigations are announced and Huang could not be reached for comment.
Huang’s unusually long 20-month stint as interim Tianjin leader took in the massive warehouse fire and chemical explosions in August last year that killed at least 165 people and caused almost US$1 billion in economic losses. He retained his posts even as scores of local government officials and port executives were punished for allowing the large stockpile of hazardous chemicals so close to a residential area, in violation of safety rules.
Huang’s career overlapped with at least three Standing Committee members, including Xi. Huang, 61, spent more than three decades in Zhejiang Province, where he worked under National People’s Congress Chairman Zhang Dejiang (張德江), the party’s No. 3 leader.
Huang was party chief of the port city of Ningbo in 2002, when Xi began a five-year stint in the Zhejiang leadership, first as governor and then party secretary. After being sent to Tianjin in 2003, Huang worked under Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (張高麗), who was municipal party chief until ascending to the party’s No. 7 position in 2012.
“Huang didn’t lose his title in the aftermath of the Tianjin explosion, which showed there was some sort of ‘protective umbrella’ covering him,” said Zhang Lifan (章立凡), a Beijing-based historian and political commentator. “It’s hard to say at this moment whether his case was too severe to paper over, or whether Xi wanted to use it to show that he’s ready to punish his own people if justice demands it.”
Had Huang formally assumed the top job in Tianjin, he would have been expected to secure a seat on the politburo. Instead, he become the 10th Central Committee member investigated under Xi and the most senior official probed since ex-Hebei provincial party secretary Zhou Benshun (周本順) was detained in July last year.
Tianjin’s municipal party committee met Saturday night to discuss Huang’s case and all local party members supported the investigation, the official Tianjin Daily reported yesterday.
Huang last appeared in public on Friday, when he visited a school and met with a delegation from the Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Tianjin Daily said.
The city now lacks a party secretary, mayor and head of public security.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was