The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) expulsion of a former top aide to former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) for corruption is a political move reinforcing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) power, analysts said yesterday.
Following an internal party investigation into former United Front Work Department head Ling Jihua (令計劃), once one of Hu’s most senior advisers, he was expelled from the party and handed over to prosecutors who formally arrested him, authorities said on Monday.
The development came three years after his son was killed in a Ferrari crash that also injured two female passengers — one of them naked — in a scandal that triggered his downfall.
Ling, 58, will almost certainly face trial, with a guilty sentence and jail term effectively guaranteed to follow.
Since coming to power, Xi has overseen a high-profile crackdown on graft that has deposed several senior officials, but in the absence of systemic reforms, critics said the drive is open to being used for political faction-fighting.
The campaign also risks reinforcing perceptions of widespread corruption in the ruling organization.
Previous scalps include former Chinese domestic security head Zhou Yongkang (周永康), who was jailed for life earlier this year, and former Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission vice chairman Xu Caihou (徐才厚), who died of cancer earlier this year while under investigation.
City University of Hong Kong political science professor Joseph Cheng (鄭宇碩) said Ling’s targeting suggested Xi was confident of taking on high-profile cadres associated with his predecessors.
Retired leaders in China are seen as continuing to wield influence behind the scenes, including regarding their allies, and Zhou has links to former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民).
“By prosecuting figures formerly associated with first Jiang Zemin, and then Hu Jintao, certainly means that Xi Jinping wants to demonstrate his determination to get rid of all resistance to his policy program irrespective of their affiliations and associations,” Cheng told reporters.
“It certainly generates pressure on previous leaders, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao,” he said.
Taiwanese and Hong Kong media have speculated that Ling — along with Zhou, Xu, and former party rising star Bo Xilai (薄熙來), who was jailed in 2013 after a murder and graft investigation — had formed a political faction opposed to Xi.
The alleged cabal has been dubbed the “New Gang of Four,” a reference to the infamous quartet including Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) widow who were put on trial in 1980.
“The Communist Party of China has moved a major step forward in its anti-graft campaign,” Xinhua news agency said in a triumphant commentary. “Like water and fire, the CPC doesn’t tolerate corruption.”
The commentary said that Ling had engaged in internal plotting, saying that his case “served as a warning that it’s absolutely forbidden to organize factions within the party.”
Ling had become an embarrassment to the ruling party, University of Sydney Chinese politics professor Kerry Brown said, adding that the Ferrari crash in Beijing came at a sensitive time during the power transition between Hu and Xi.
“Ling was simply unable to rein in people around him cashing in on his political links — the most obvious being his son, who was evidently out of control,” he said. “Ling harmed the party, in this story, just like Zhou did, and the Party has taken its revenge.”
He described the expulsion as “the final dispatching of someone who flew too close to the sun after rising from a very modest background.”
“It just goes to prove that there is no more dangerous or treacherous place in the world to try to exist in than the upper reaches of Chinese politics,” he told reporters.
State-run media made no mention of Ling’s links to Hu, and only passing reference to allegations against his family.
In an editorial, the Global Times, which is affiliated with the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, said Ling’s “close relatives indulged in their desires and became involved in criminal behavior and they paid a high price.”
In June last year, the party announced an investigation into his brother, Ling Zhengce (令政策), for “serious discipline violations.”
Ling was a vice president of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a CCP-controlled debating chamber, in the family’s home province of Shanxi.
Xinhua on Monday also implicated Ling’s wife, while reports last year said that his brother-in-law had been held.
The People’s Daily said Ling’s case should serve as a lesson to other officials.
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