News Analysis
In succession battles in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leaders regularly seek to assure they will not be held accountable for the crimes committed on their watch. There has been no bigger crime on the CCP’s books since the Cultural Revolution than the persecution of Falun Gong, and the fear of being held responsible for that persecution is driving what may be one of the bitterest succession battles in the history of the CCP.
A 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing released by WikiLeaks states a principle that governs the struggles over succession that many China watchers have observed: “The central feature of leadership politics was the need to protect oneself and one’s family from attack after leaving office. Thus, current leaders carefully cultivated protégés who would defend their interests once they stepped down,” notes an unnamed source in the cable.
The jockeying for position that is a constant feature of CCP politics has intensified with the 18th Party Congress, due to be convened later this year. At that meeting a new head of the CCP—presumed to be Xi Jinping—will be introduced and the membership of the elite nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo will be reshuffled. The people who run the Party will be locked into place until the next Party Congress, five years down the road.
At the center of the intrigues in the Party are Bo Xilai, the Party boss of the province-level city of Chongqing in central-western China, and Zhou Yongkang, who heads the powerful Central Political and Legislative Committee and oversees the 610 office, an extra-judicial Gestapo-like police force charged with eradicating the spiritual practice of Falun Gong.
Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai are both known to be part of a faction in the CCP loyal to former CCP head Jiang Zemin.
Bill Gertz of the website The Washington Free Beacon quotes a U.S. official to the effect that Zhou has become Bo’s protector. After Wang Lijun, the former head of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau under Bo Xilai, left the U.S. Consulate, he was detained by Beijing officials and was said to be eager to reveal all of Bo’s dealings in order to give Bo’s opponents in the CCP the ammunition they needed to justify bringing him down.
According to U.S. officials quoted by Gertz, “Zhou Yongkang, China’s most senior security official and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, has taken charge of Chongqing from Bo Xilai. However, Zhou has not allowed Beijing security authorities to further investigate or arrest Bo.”
Promotion Through Persecution
The special relationship of Bo and Zhou rests to a great deal on the fact that each of them climbed rapidly in the Party’s hierarchy due to their enthusiastic implementation of Jiang’s policy of eradicating the Falun Gong spiritual practice.
Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) involves practicing meditative exercises and living according to teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. After first being taught publicly in 1992, the practice spread very rapidly, so that by early 1999 an official in the state’s Sports Administration suggested 100 million people had taken up Falun Gong.
