2nd Week Anti-corruption drive - Chairman of everything

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Anti-corruption drive

Chairman of everything

Xi Jinping consolidates his power, and officials are quaking in their boots

Jul 5th 2014 | BEIJING | From the print edition

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CHINA’S president appears to have killed two eagles with one arrow in bringing down one of the nation’s highest-ranking military men. On June 30th General Xu Caihou was stripped of his Communist-Party membership and handed over to prosecutors on corruption charges. State media said he took money and other loot in exchange for arranging promotions. Until last year, General Xu was one of the two dozen most powerful men in the country.

His fall helps consolidate Xi Jinping’s control over the army and at the same time burnishes his credentials as an anti-corruption crusader. The party announced the expulsion of six more figures this week, including a former vice-minister, a former senior manager at a state-owned oil firm and a former head of a government watchdog. All of them were connected to Zhou Yongkang, until 2012 the head of state security and formerly one of China’s nine most powerful men. In a separate announcement, the party dismissed Wan Qingliang, a rising star who was party boss of Guangzhou, one of China’s largest cities.

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• Fighting for their future
• Balancing act
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• Xi Jinping
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General Xu takes an early bath

It is possible Mr Xi is merely grappling with the far-reaching corruption that his predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, often spoke about as a mortal threat to the party’s rule but failed to stem. But there are hints he is up to more. Many of the figures already ensnared have close ties to the previous leaders. General Xu was among Mr Jiang’s closest allies in the military establishment. Dismantling old patronage networks would clear the way for Mr Xi to bring in more of his own people. This, in turn, would help him to proceed with a wide-ranging reform agenda that will ruffle the feathers of many vested interests.

Mr Xi has already moved away from the older model of consensus-based rule in which the top handful of leaders shared responsibility and decision-making authority. He has asserted his authority as the sole head of numerous policy “leading groups” of the sort that once had multiple bosses. By taking down Mr Zhou’s cronies and, as is widely expected, Mr Zhou himself, he will control the state-security network as well as the armed forces.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is what all of this says to the general populace. Convincing people that he is determined to root out corruption at all levels is one thing. But it is hard for Mr Xi to do it without appearing to admit what everybody already knows: that the system itself is rotten to the core.