Within ten days of the conclusion of Beijing’s two sessions, five senior officials have already fallen from their positions for anti-graft investigations.
A Bloody Purge on the Way
Wang Juntao, chairman of the National Committee of the China Democratic Party who currently resides in the United States, told The Epoch Times that he believes Xi’s move is meant to deter the CCP officials from harboring any form of dissent.“As I predicted in 2022 after the 20th National Congress, the next step in the CCP’s political arena would be a bloody purge. In fact, Xi Jinping is trying to completely get rid of those officials he deems untrustworthy,” he said.
Mr. Wang personally knows of a former department-level official who managed to move abroad in the past two years.
“It’s noteworthy that besides incumbent officials, retired officials are also targeted,” Mr. Wang said. “This official told me that many of his colleagues have been arrested, and some of them have been retired for several years, but they have still been arrested. So we have learned that Xi Jinping’s purge is now a very fierce political campaign.”
He added the so-called “anti-corruption” is just a disguise to deceive the people and win their hearts.
“For those in the officialdom, political purges would lead to officials harboring resentment towards Xi Jinping. Therefore, Xi Jinping had to intimidate them until they were filled with fear of him to the bone. So he publicly denounced these purged officials to serve as a warning to all CCP cadres not to harbor any dissenting thoughts,” Mr. Wang analyzed.
He concluded that a dictator usually maintains his “fighting spirit” through continuous purges, but the consequences accelerate his demise.
5 Officials Taken Down in 10 Days
These five high-ranking officials are Dou Wangui, vice chairman of the Uygur Autonomous Region’s Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body; Liu Yuejin, a retired public security official who served as the first vice-ministerial level counter-terrorism commissioner; Li Xiangang, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Heilongjiang Provincial People’s Congress; Li Yong, the former general manager of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC); and Li Jiping, former vice president of the China Development Bank, who has been retired for more than eight years.According to his public biography, Dou Wanghui has been working in Xinjiang for a long time. He became vice chairman of the Xinjiang Political Consultative Conference in January 2018, a position he held until he was investigated. His last public appearance was on Feb. 19, when he attended a meeting.
Liu Yuejin’s downfall came four years after he retired as the first vice-ministerial-level counterterrorism commissioner. He was the first senior public security official to fall from grace since the end of the two sessions.
Mr. Liu, now 65, has a long history of service in the public security system, including as director of the General Office of the Ministry of Public Security and deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security’s anti-narcotics program. During his tenure as an anti-narcotics official, Mr. Liu headed a task force investigating the 2011 attack on Chinese crew members in the Golden Triangle.
He became the first and so far the only counter-terrorism commissioner in December 2015.
Li Hinguang, 61, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Heilongjiang Provincial People’s Congress, was investigated while in office.
Mr. Li’s last public appearance before his downfall was in early March when he led a team to Mudanjiang City to supervise work on production safety and chaired a meeting on the subject.
Li Yong, the former China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s general manager, was under investigation on March 15, just three months before his scheduled retirement.
Mr. Li Yong is 60 years old. He began his career at China National Offshore Oil Corporation (now CNOOC) when he graduated from college in 1984. In March 2017, he transferred to China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, where he served as deputy general manager. He then returned to CNOOC in September 2020, serving as general manager of CNOOC until his retirement.
On March 13, Li Jiping, 68, the former vice president of China Development Bank (CDB) who had been retired for more than eight years, was investigated.
With a background as a senior economist, he worked at the headquarters of China Construction Bank for 11 years and in China Development Bank for 22 years.
