周永康被移交司法机关，五毛们集体失声

[happywings]

China arrests ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang
File photo: Zhou Yongkang, 1 November 2010
Mr Zhou was head of China's vast internal security apparatus until 2012
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Caught in China's corruption campaign
Profile: Zhou Yongkang
China ex-leader 'faces long case'
Ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang, the most senior Chinese official to be investigated for corruption, has been arrested and expelled from the Communist Party, state media report.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate, China's top prosecuting body, said it had opened a formal probe against him.

Before he retired two years ago, Mr Zhou was the head of China's vast internal security apparatus.

Many of his former associates and relatives also face corruption probes.

Since coming to power, Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a high-profile campaign to weed out corruption among party and government officials.

Mr Zhou was accused of several crimes, including "serious violations of party discipline", "accepting large sums of bribes", "disclosing party and state secrets" and "committing adultery with several women" as part of corrupt transactions, Xinhua news agency reported (in Chinese).

Mr Zhou's arrest was announced in a statement by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, released late on Friday night.

'Most feared'
Mr Zhou, who is in his 70s, has not been seen in public for more than a year.

Analysts say the investigation against Mr Zhou allows Xi Jinping to consolidate his power base, remove people opposed to his reforms, and improve the image of the Communist Party.

Mr Zhou was previously also a member of China's top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee.

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Analysis: Zhuang Chen, BBC Chinese

Zhou Yongkang was allegedly the most feared and powerful senior official before he retired two years ago from the pinnacle of China's decision-making body. He is also the biggest "tiger" - the highest ranking official - caged by Xi Jinping in his anti-corruption drive.

Dubbed "Master Kang", Mr Zhou put many of his followers in powerful positions in the oil and security sectors during his heyday in office. Many of his loyalists have since been either sentenced or indicted on corruption charges.

It has taken over a year to investigate his case, which suggests the authorities are mindful of its sensitivity. Some suspect the party would rather deal with his case in secrecy, given how much Mr Zhou knows.

The fact that he is to be investigated by state prosecutors means the authorities have gathered sufficient evidence.

It also shows an ever-more confident Xi Jinping making Mr Zhou a case in point to further consolidate his power.

The suspense now is over whether Mr Zhou will be charged and tried in public, in the fashion of his disgraced former ally Bo Xilai.

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A Chinese minister has previously said that the investigation against Mr Zhou would take a long time to complete.

Mr Zhou had enjoyed a close working relationship with former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, who was sentenced to life imprisonment last year on bribery charges.

Bo's wife Gu Kailai was given a suspended death sentence in 2012 for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.

Bo's downfall was seen as the biggest political shake-up to hit China's ruling elite in decades, and revealed divisions at the top of the party over how the scandal should be handled.

BBC graphic showing Zhou Yongkang's sphere of influence
'Zero-tolerance'
Mr Zhou's arrest was welcomed by many social media users on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like platform in China.

"We have zero-tolerance against corruption!" one user wrote.

"No position is off-limits when it comes to removing malignant tumours, winning the applause and cheers of the people," another user, Zhang Jinyang, wrote.

Many users highlighted the allegations that Mr Zhou had leaked state secrets and committed adultery.

However, some comments about the charges against Mr Zhou appear to have been censored.

Searching for "Zhou Yongkang" on Sina Weibo brings up a number of microblog posts, but also the following message: "Under the relevant laws, regulations and policies, some of the search results cannot be displayed."

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Timeline: Zhou Yongkang

1942: Born in Wu Xi city in eastern Jiangsu province

1964: Joins the Communist Party and spends the next 32 years in the oil sector

1998: Becomes party secretary of China National Petroleum Corporation

1999: Appointed party secretary of Sichuan

2002: Appointed member of the Politburo at the 16th Party Congress; becomes minister of public security later that year

2007: Further promoted to member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo - China's highest state organ

2012: His lieutenants begin to get sacked and investigated; he appears with Bo Xilai at Chinese National People's Congress session

December 2013: His son Zhou Bin is arrested on corruption charges

December 2014: Arrested, expelled from party

 

[happywings]

Why Is China Purging Its Former Top Security Chief, Zhou Yongkang?
A ChinaFile Conversation
PIN HO, RICHARD MCGREGOR12.17.13

Liu Jin / AFP / Getty Images
Zhou Yongkang, China’s former top security chief and former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of C.P.C., is being investigated on charges of corruption.
Pin Ho:

[Zhou Yongkang’s downfall] is the second chapter of the “Bo Xilai Drama”—a drama begun at the 18th Party Congress. The Party’s power transition has been secret and has lacked convincing procedure. This [lack of transparency] has triggered unimaginably huge debates within the Party. Every retiring Politburo Standing member has been trying hard to pick their own successors. Zhou Yongkang picked Bo Xilai as the Secretary of Political and Legal Affairs. There was a hidden attempt behind this arrangement—a challenge to Xi Jinping’s power. Now, the Party is done with Bo Xilai and has started to handle Zhou Yongkang.

Xi Jinping plans to use Zhou Yongkang as a sacrifice in his anti-corruption campaign. If Xi failed to break the unwritten rule that the Politburo Standing members are immune to any legal punishment, his anti-corruption would have no teeth. Zhou Yongkang’s corruption has been well-known and people both inside and outside of the Party hate him. Thus, he has become the best tool to build up Xi Jinping’s power.

Responses

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - 12:15am
Richard McGregor

Through the fog of factional war that invariably envelopes any top-level corruption investigation in China, we can be clear about one thing if Zhou Yongkang is in fact the target of an official graft probe.

Xi Jinping’s willingness to take on a once-serving member of the Politiburo standing committee will confirm the assessment a number of China experts have already made of him—that he is a singularly powerful leader; certainly the most powerful General Secretary of the C.C.P. since Deng Xiaoping.

Equally, a formal graft probe, if confirmed, will not be evidence of something else being bandied around by some commentators—that Xi is finally “getting serious” about corruption.

Under C.C.P. rules—in which the party catches and kills its own, through its own internal justice system, free of any of the constraints of the law (such as it is)—corruption probes inherently are political decisions. An investigation of someone as senior as Zhou is thus a high wire act, requiring Xi to not only get the support of serving members of the inner sanctum but also the informal council of elders who are consulted on sensitive issues. To secure such consensus, Xi clearly has lots of power, and balls.

Zhou is no small fish. The trail of the investigation so far has walked the world through his power bases—the sprawling province of Sichuan, where he was once the top official; the “petroleum mafia,” once-impregnable fortresses of the big state-owned oil giants, which have deep military connections; and finally in the state security establishment, which he oversaw under Hu Jintao.

I suspect the threshold decision to take on Zhou was made concurrently with the move against Bo Xilai. Bo’s unforgivable sin was to buck the system and campaign openly for a position on the standing committee. Zhou’s apparent support for him meant that Bo’s fall made him a marked man as well. But still, Xi has clearly let the investigators have their head, as evidenced by the detention of various senior executives in the oil industry, and also Zhou’s own son.

Why, then, given the audacity of Xi’s move, could anyone suggest he is “not serious” about corruption?

Prosecutors, and prosecutions, even in democratic systems, can be tainted by politics. But in China, politics trumps all other considerations. Certainly, Xi’s anti-corruption rhetoric seems to have put some five-star restaurants out of business, as state and private businesses cut back on ostentatious entertaining. In Wang Qishan, he has an exceptionally tough head of the CCP’s anti-graft body. But still, there is no good reason other than power politics for why Zhou and his family should be investigated instead of, say, that of the outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, or perhaps even members of Xi’s own family, Both have amassed enormous wealth, chronicled in detail by The New York Times and Bloomberg News, yet they remain untouchable.

So while we shouldn’t shed any tears for Zhou Yongkang—it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, as the saying goes— let’s equally not pretend Xi is ushering in a new era of fearless prosecution of graft.

Friday, December 20, 2013 - 4:30pm
Pin Ho

As Mr. McGregor said, Xi may be becoming a powerful leader. In fact, Xi has gotten his hands on more complete political power than Deng Xiaoping. Technically, Deng ruled from behind the throne and the Politburo Standing Committee was his Grand Council.

But Xi now occupies all of the most powerful positions. In addition to the Party and the military he also controls the government, including the economy. He holds the number one positions both in fact and in name. He not only occupies the most important political position but he has distanced himself from other members of the Standing Committee. On CCTV’s news network, reports about activities related to members of Politburo Standing Committee are only broadcast after the top news and are limited to two minutes. By contrast, news reports about Xi are always in the top news and have no such time limitations.

This represents a breakdown of the whole system behind the Politburo Standing Committee. And in any case, the collective leadership system is a rare creature that has never had to stand the test of time or been tested by events. In Politburo Standing committee meetings, each member has his own axe to grind. They usually don’t oppose each other’s policy proposals and personnel appointments, because they know others will repay them in kind in the future. A collective leadership in which members only seek personal gain is not sustainable. Hu Jintao’s Standing Committee left a powder keg for Xi Jinping. If Xi dithers like his predecessor Hu, he’ll likely be the last General Secretary of the CPC.

But even as he presents himself as powerful, Xi Jinping has put himself in the most dangerous of situations, surrounded by arrogant and conceited princelings and by bureaucrats who are all talk but no action. They are good at scheming and intrigue and have their own intricate circles of power. So it will take courage and intelligence for Xi to break away from them.

In recent years, people’s faith in so called “reformist” C.C.P. leaders came to naught, people don’t have the nerve to place much hope in Xi Jinping. So much less so given that during his first year in office his language and actions have echoed those of Mao Zedong, and he has so openly cracked down on liberals, to the point that some people see him as casting himself as Mao’s heir.

If this is the case, then Zhou Yongkang is just a sacrifice at the altar of Xi’s power. Xi’s is just an old-school power play. It’s no different from when [Mao] punished Xi’s father’s comrade Gao Gang (former Vice Chairman of the Party), who later later won sympathy [because Mao had used him]. But he was hardly an innocent victim, he had committed all sorts of outrageous offenses when he was in power!

But what if Xi Jingping eventually proves he is truly an ambitious reformer, then how should we regard what he’s doing today? Which is to say, how can you demand that Xi achieve everything all at once? If, as Mr McGregor’s logic seems to suggest he should, Xi were suddenly to clean out every corrupt official at once, he would be out of power in an instant.

To what extent Xi’s thinking is rooted in Western civilization’s political thinking, we don’t know, but his familiarity with tales of palace intrigue is indisputable. He has been reading them for decades, so he should know that if he wants to build up his power, he must first protect himself.

This is how Chinese politics is strange: because Chinese leaders (and business leaders) love reading books (some of them fictional) about the manipulations of the emperors, everyone in Chinese politics knows how to play dirty.

But people tend to underestimate the scope of a critical situation or how it might unfold. If Zhou Yongkang had seen his own fate in Bo Xilai’s troubles, if Bo had seen his own life sentence in Wang Lijun’s, would either of them have allowed themselves to be captured? Obviously, they didn’t calculate well.

And at the time, Xi Jinping didn’t necessarily know what his own next steps would be. He didn’t make his choice until now. Of course, he made the right choice. Regardless of what kind of leader he turns out to be, arresting Zhou Yongkang lifts everyone’s spirits.

A good feud in the imperial court makes a great show. So let’s all find a cozy spot on the couch and wait for the next episode.

 

[liveInMiss]

真正的五毛才不会被这点小事难倒，随便举例：
党中央敢于真正的反腐，无论官位多高违法必纠。
难道不是在党的领导下完成这么艰巨的任务取得巨大的胜利
做人谁没有点儿贪心，换你坐这个位置说不定贪的更多
难道圣人才能当领导么

 

[happywings]

真正的五毛才不会被这点小事难倒，随便举例：
党中央敢于真正的反腐，无论官位多高违法必纠。
难道不是在党的领导下完成这么艰巨的任务取得巨大的胜利
做人谁没有点儿贪心，换你坐这个位置说不定贪的更多
难道圣人才能当领导么

英明的党！正确的党！
左边搂着叶迎春，右边搂着沈冰，指挥人民群众扫黄打非！

 

[happywings]

 

[nfpa70]

这后生，整这些洋码子。。。
永康倒了，看来共产党还会继续苟延残喘，五分气煞笔了。

 

[liveInMiss]

楼上真是人才

 

[nfpa70]

楼上真是人才

腐败骂，反腐败也骂，屌民。

 

[小人得志]

小和尚看来心事很重啊，偷偷在楼上点个赞！
反腐谁骂了，我们都高兴啊。。。一批批的贪官现形，好事啊，我们都拍手大赞！
海外追逃名单一批批发出，国内继续紧锣密鼓！
楼上几个五毛，背上有凉意吗？
LiveinMiss网友竟然说出了
“做人谁没有点儿贪心，换你坐这个位置说不定贪的更多
难道圣人才能当领导么”
这是贪官被抓后自我辩解的节奏吗？你对贪官真是同情理解，你真够宽容的！

 

[法海]

抓的好，不但要抓，而且要杀一批，以敬效尤。

现在国内老百姓，无论微信微博ＱＱ陌陌,都对社会风气的整肃、转好而叫拍手欢迎。

 

[黛绮丝]

小和尚看来心事很重啊，偷偷在楼上点个赞！
反腐谁骂了，我们都高兴啊。。。一批批的贪官现形，好事啊，我们都拍手大赞！
海外追逃名单一批批发出，国内继续紧锣密鼓！
楼上几个五毛，背上有凉意吗？
LiveinMiss网友竟然说出了
“做人谁没有点儿贪心，换你坐这个位置说不定贪的更多
难道圣人才能当领导么”
这是贪官被抓后自我辩解的节奏吗？你对贪官真是同情理解，你真够宽容的！

批评起来不分敌我了，Live同学是你战友。

 

[黛绮丝]

抓的好，不但要抓，而且要杀一批，以敬效尤。

现在国内老百姓，无论微信微博ＱＱ陌陌,都对社会风气的整肃、转好而叫拍手欢迎。

关键还是法治，靠人治，抓打杀都不管用。

 

[法海]

关键还是法治，靠人治，抓打杀都不管用。

相信中国会走出自己的法治之路。

 

[flowing_water]

未經審訊，未經定罪，先行非法禁錮，而且禁錮超過一年，大陸的法制令人失去信心。

公告周被涉嫌貪污而被捕的同時，透露尚未審訊的性行為案件，有製造輿論，影響民意，和令此兩個案件互相影響的作用，嚴重妨礙司法公正。

我支持對犯罪份正法，但不支持私刑和任何不合情理的手段。

 

[法海]

未經審訊，未經定罪，先行非法禁錮，而且禁錮超過一年，大陸的法制令人失去信心。

公告周被涉嫌貪污而被捕的同時，透露尚未審訊的性行為案件，有製造輿論，影響民意，和令此兩個案件互相影響的作用，嚴重妨礙司法公正。

我支持對犯罪份正法，但不支持私刑和任何不合情理的手段。

他被带走，是作为党的成员，被党的组织纪委部门带走，在党的纪律内接受调查，而非国家的司法部门。

 

[flowing_water]

他被带走，是作为党的成员，被党的组织纪委部门带走，在党的纪律内接受调查，而非国家的司法部门。

這是黨法高於國法的現象。一國之內存在兩種法律，是人對法律，無論黨法還是國法，都失去信心的原因之一。

 

[法海]

這是黨法高於國法的現象。一國之內存在兩種法律，是人對法律，無論黨法還是國法，都失去信心的原因之一。

二元體制也是一種出路；世上恐怕沒有啥是唯一的。除了死亡。

 

[flyingeric]

什么五毛，纯粹就是骗中共钱的，而中共和清朝政府以及国民党大陆时代的政府有区别吗？

其实没区别，所以五毛都是闭着眼睛混吃的，但凡有人骂它们，它们就开心了，因为有钱进账了。

一群变态异形！

 

[nfpa70]

批评起来不分敌我了，Live同学是你战友。

硬伤。
不过也活该，玩阴的把自己阴了，该骂。

 

[我的梦想我的路]

抓的好，不但要抓，而且要杀一批，以敬效尤。

现在国内老百姓，无论微信微博ＱＱ陌陌,都对社会风气的整肃、转好而叫拍手欢迎。

大内权斗 成王败寇