As I have said before, I am guessing that the question of what to do about [former security chief] Zhou Yongkang has caused great controversy in the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party.
After all, there are some differences between Zhou Yongkang and [former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission] Xu Caihou. Zhou Yongkang is a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, while Xu Caihou was only a member of the Politburo.
What's more, Xu Caihou is a soldier, who should be tried by a military court, behind closed doors. So it doesn't really matter if he chooses to cooperate or not; the authorities will sentence him anyway as they see fit.
But Zhou isn't in the military, and if his case goes public and is transferred to the judiciary, taking [jailed former Chongqing party chief] Bo Xilai as a precedent, the authorities will pretty much have to give him an open trial, with a live media feed, and a substantial opportunity to defend himself.
Party's image threatened
Zhou Yongkang was in his post for a long time and in charge of a great many powerful agencies, making it very hard for the authorities to come up with an appropriate charge against him. For this reason, putting Zhou Yongkang on trial will be tantamount to putting the Communist Party on trial.
It is sure to do great damage to the party's public image.
What's more, we don't know if Zhou will take a cooperative attitude. If he refuses to play along, and refuses to plead guilty, then what? He could still leap alive from the net and take a chunk out of their fingers. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Thus far, they have already got quite a haul of "tigers" ranking at provincial level and above. But none of them has been put on trial openly.
Watertight case?
If [President] Xi Jinping and [party disciplinary chief] Wang Qishan don't come up with a watertight case against Zhou that can be taken to trial, it's going to be very hard to convince their colleagues that the case should go public.
There are still a few people in the highest levels of leadership who are unwilling to break the taboo around prosecuting members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
But from Xi and Wang's point of view, they can't make the case against Zhou Yongkang public and yet not give him a public trial like Bo Xilai, because the damage to the legitimacy and authenticity of their anti-corruption campaign would be too great.
It would be an even greater personal blow to both Xi and Wang not to bring Zhou's case to the judicial stage, or to limit it to an internal party investigation.
Unreliable consensus
Some say there has been a consensus reached among the top leadership about the question of Zhou Yongkang, but such a consensus can only be fleeting at best.
It's unreliable, because Xi Jinping's faction can't afford to stay its hand at the last minute after taking clear aim at Zhou. Their authority would suffer greatly, and so they must find a way to take it forward.
The other faction won't be satisfied with the consensus; they will still be looking for ways to weaken Xi Jinping's power.
And so, the two factions will continue to slug it out.
Last January, I wrote that the party leadership will largely be able to preserve the overall appearance of unity ... but that the power struggle will continue until it evolves into a form of jungle warfare.
Looking at how things have developed up until now, I am certain of it.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
Hu Ping is the New York-based editor of the Chinese-language monthly Beijing Spring, and is a member of the board of directors of Human Rights in China.
The CPC is already divided, as it has always been, between the crooks cum scum and the honest patriots. Chinese citizens have humongous brains and any revelations are only echoes of what they already know about the extent of rot in the CPC caused by the crooks and scums. If Hu Ping had kept his mouth shut, nobody would have known that his brain is so weak and small that it embarrasses his parents terribly and shames his ancestors horribly. But then again, morons can't help announcing the fact to get some sympathy for their idiocy.
Aug 13, 2014 04:05 AM
