The unexpected death of former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Oct. 27 has been widely questioned, with many believing that he was made to appear to have died of a heart attack.
Gao Guangjun, a former lecturer at the People’s Public Security University of China, revealed that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had set up a specialized assassination department during his second term, accentuating his mentality of managing the country with intelligence agents.
After the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th National Congress, Chen Wenqing, secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and Wang Xiaohong, public security minister, were appointed to the Central Secretariat as part of the staffing for Xi Jinping’s third term. The presence of two officials with public security backgrounds among the seven members of the Central Committee implies that the CCP is increasingly attempting to maintain control over the country through the use of police forces and covert intelligence agencies.
Xi’s Special Department
In a recent discussion show on NTD TV’s Pinnacle View, Mr. Gao said that Xi Jinping has taken China further into the former Soviet Union’s KGB-style governing.“Around 2018, Xi Jinping created a special department called the Operations Bureau of the Central Military Commission. The sole mission of this bureau is assassination and kidnapping. The Operations Bureau has truly frightened and chilled CCP officials,” he said.
He cited the example of former CCP leader Hu Jintao, the predecessor of Xi. Mr. Li owed a lot to Mr. Hu as he paved the way for Mr. Li to climb the ranks in CCP officialdom. But when Mr. Hu was forcibly taken away from the 20th National Congress, Mr. Li did not even dare to give Mr. Hu a caring look.
Numerous High-Profile Suspicious Deaths
In the discussion show program, Mr. Gao reminded the audience that after Xi came to power, the number of sudden deaths of CCP cadres has been the highest since the end of the Cultural Revolution. In addition, an unusually high number of sudden deaths have been reported among entrepreneurs and other celebrities, much higher than during the Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao eras.Several incidents support Mr. Gao’s statement.
In the early morning hours of April 12, 2021, Yang Xiong, the former mayor of Shanghai, suddenly died of a heart attack. It was rumored that Mr. Yang was sent to the nearby Huashan Hospital by a friend, and the hospital staff was only told that he was an important person, without further details about his official position. Nor did Mr. Yang bring with him the red card of the high-level CCP officials. In the end, the doctors did not give him any special treatment.
Mr. Yang’s death was similar to Mr. Li’s in many ways. He also died suddenly of a heart attack, and also at the age of 68. At the time, the outside world similarly questioned the cause of his death, but after a low-key funeral, the matter eventually faded into silence without resolution.
Mr. Yang was a confidant of Jiang Mianheng, the eldest son of former CCP leader Jiang Zemin. In 2012, Mr. Yang, who was the deputy party chief of Shanghai at the time, broke with convention by simultaneously serving as the acting mayor of Shanghai and became the mayor the next year.
At the time, it was revealed that Xi intended to select someone he trusted as mayor of Shanghai, but had to give up because of Jiang Mianheng’s interference.
Chen Xiaolu, 71, son of Chen Yi, one of the founding marshals of the CCP, died suddenly of a heart attack in Hainan Province on Feb. 28, 2018. Chinese media reported that Chen was overall in good physical and mental health, but suddenly fell unconscious and was taken to Sanya 301 Hospital on Hainan Island, where he died after medical treatment failed to bring him back to life. The whole scenario was similar to Mr. Li’s death.
Chen was influential among the CCP’s princelings—descendants of prominent CCP elders.
According to a close friend of Chen, some remarks he made at a dinner party may have brought him bad luck. When someone at the party commented that Xi could be even more leftist than Bo Xilai, another princeling who attempted to rival Xi by advocating Maoism, Chen said that China could no longer afford to regress to the old path and that if Xi wanted to go back to his old ways, he should be replaced after he finishes serving one term.
This friend revealed that Chen’s words reached Xi’s ears, and within a week he died suddenly in Hainan.
In July 2023, Chinese state media announced that Wang Shaojun, the former director of the Central Bureau of Police and Security, died on April 26, 2023, “due to an illness incurable despite medical intervention.” The authorities concealed Wang Shaojun’s death for nearly three months, which has been criticized as suspicious.
There were also suspicious deaths among Chinese billionaires, who began their entrepreneurial journey in China.
Xie Zhikun, the founder of Chinese investment conglomerate Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, died at the age of 61 after suffering a heart attack in Beijing on Dec. 18, 2021. Some say he committed suicide, while others say he was murdered.
Zhang Zhenxin, a business tycoon who founded UCF Holdings Group in 2003 and grew it into a financial conglomerate that controlled three publicly listed companies, died on Sept. 18, 2019, at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. The CCP’s official statement claimed that he could not be resuscitated due to multiple organ failure, alcoholism, and acute pancreatitis, but Mr. Zhang was only 48 years old, and the public did not believe that he was in such poor health.
On July 4, 2018, Wang Jian, 57, the founder of HNA Group, fell to his death from a 10-meter-high cliff while taking photographs during a business trip to France. Many people believed that his death was made to appear accidental.
There was also a kidnap case back in January 2017, when Xiao Jianhua, a Canadian-Chinese billionaire and founder of the Tomorrow Group, was secretly abducted from the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong and taken back to China.
A History of Secret Operations
The entire history of the CCP has been marked by secret intelligence. Former Chinese leader Zhou Enlai received his earliest training from the KGB and then organized a special operations division in Shanghai to carry out assassinations and kidnappings. The targets were not just limited to Nationalist officials, but also within the CCP itself.In May 1931, Mr. Zhou led members of the Special Action Section to exterminate the nine members of Gu Shunzhang’s family who had turned to the Nationalist Party from the CCP, an act of “betrayal” in the eyes of the CCP, and their bodies were buried deeply on the spot to erase any traces.
During a political struggle, some members of the CCP’s special forces also attempted to assassinate another leading figure, Zhang Guo-to, but were unsuccessful. He eventually fled to Canada, where he spent the rest of his life.
According to Mr. Gao, Xi is a big admirer of the Soviet Communist Party and wholeheartedly wants to emulate it, part of which was to emulate the kidnapping and assassination operations.
“That is why he reorganized the Central Military Commission’s Operations Bureau after he came to power,” Mr. Gao said.
