{"id":243693,"date":"2022-10-07T17:07:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-08T00:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=243693"},"modified":"2022-10-19T14:37:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T21:37:31","slug":"political-clique-purged-from-state-security-apparatus-ahead-of-party-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2022\/10\/political-clique-purged-from-state-security-apparatus-ahead-of-party-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"“Political Clique” Purged from State Security Apparatus Ahead of Party Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sun Lijun and Fu Zhenghua, <\/span>formerly powerful ministers in China\u2019s state security apparatus<\/span><\/a>, have been sentenced to death with a two year reprieve for corruption and other crimes. Such sentences are typically commuted to life in prison without parole. The timing of the verdicts and the allegation that Sun led a \u201cpolitical clique\u201d that was disloyal to Xi Jinping place the two cases squarely in the shadow of the upcoming 20th Party Congress, which opens later this month. A host of less senior police chiefs were also convicted in connection with Sun and Fu\u2019s cases. The Associated Press <\/span>reported on Sun\u2019s sentencing<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sun was convicted by the court in the northeastern city of Changchun of collecting 646 million yuan ($91 million) in bribes, China Central TV reported on its website. <\/span> In a state-produced anti-graft documentary<\/span><\/a> released earlier this year, Sun, who was behind bars at the time, recalled receiving annual gifts of boxed \u201cseafood\u201d from a provincial official which were actually filled with $300,000 in cash, totalling $15 million over the years. Sun was also involved in corruption in the United States. Earlier this year the Justice Department sued casino mogul Steven Wynn, alleging that he has acted as a foreign agent for the Chinese government\u2014<\/span>Sun allegedly lobbied him to call for billionaire Guo Wengui\u2019s placement on a no-fly list<\/span><\/a>. In 2017, Guo Wengui leveled <\/span>unverified claims<\/span><\/a> of corruption against Sun and others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A host of other officials have fallen alongside Sun, accused of participating in his \u201cclique.\u201d At The South China Morning Post, William Zheng reported on <\/span>former Minister of Justice Fu Zhenghua\u2019s sentencing<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fu was convicted of accepting 117 million yuan (US$16.6 million) in bribes and using his position to cover up his brother\u2019s crimes, CCTV reported. Wang was found guilty of accepting more than 440 million yuan in bribes, and for covering up triad activities and forging identity documents.<\/span><\/p>\n […] The court said Fu Zhenghua had admitted all charges, shown remorse and provided information to investigators on other corruption cases. But it said there would be no further commutation or parole granted after Fu\u2019s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment following the two-year reprieve due to the \u201cserious harm caused to the country and society\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n The court described the bribes received by Fu as \u201cparticularly large\u201d, the circumstances of his crimes as \u201cparticularly serious\u201d and their social impact \u201cparticularly severe\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n […] The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party\u2019s anti-corruption watchdog, said Fu had \u201clost his party spirit and principles\u201d and accused Fu of colluding with Sun \u2013 the former vice-minister of public security who in July pleaded guilty to taking bribes, manipulating the securities market and illegal possession of firearms. [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The former police chiefs of Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shanxi province were also <\/span>convicted on corruption charges and accused of colluding with Sun Lijun<\/span><\/a>. State media labeled them \u201ctwo-faced\u201d people.\u00a0 Liu Yanping, who led the Party\u2019s anti-graft arm within the Ministry of State Security, was <\/span>expelled from the Party<\/span><\/a> in September for his alleged involvement with Sun. His expulsion paves the way for a lengthy prison sentence. Wan Like, the provincial official who gifted Sun the boxes of \u201cseafood\u201d mentioned above, was also <\/span>convicted of corruption and handed a suspended death sentence<\/span><\/a>. Xi has <\/span>warned that the \u201cstubbornness and danger\u201d of corruption has not subsided<\/span><\/a> despite the decade-long campaign against it. Yet the extraordinary raft of corruption charges tied to an alleged political clique do not appear to be simply a matter of graft. At The Financial Times, Edward White <\/span>interviewed experts on Chinese politics about the political implications of the latest corruption crackdown<\/strong><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis clearly was a warning\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009against overt acts of factionalism and disobeying Xi Jinping diktats in the run-up to the 20th party congress, and beyond,\u201d said Victor Shih, professor of Chinese political economy at the University of California, San Diego.<\/span><\/p>\n […] Yuen Yuen Ang, an expert on China\u2019s political economy at the University of Michigan, said it was \u201chard to believe\u201d the latest cases were \u201croutine\u201d given the sensitivity of the timing. \u201cSometimes corruption crackdowns are about curtailing graft and other times they are a political instrument,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n […] \u201cAs Leninist regimes are ruled by man, not laws, any new leader overwhelmingly must rely on a purge of his rivals and promotion of loyalists within the regime to consolidate power and to implement his programmes,\u201d said Wu Guoguang, [who worked as an adviser to former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang and is now at the University of Victoria, Canada]. [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ironically, Fu Zhenghua\u2019s sentencing coincided with <\/span>the release of his former law school classmate Zhou Shifeng<\/span><\/a>, a human rights lawyer imprisoned for seven years on charges of subversion. Zhou was one of 300 lawyers arrested as part of the 2015 \u201c<\/span>709 crackdown<\/span><\/a>\u201d on human rights lawyers. Wang Quanzhang, Zhou\u2019s friend and a former human rights lawyer also imprisoned in the crackdown, spoke with Zhou and relayed his comments <\/span>to the South China Morning Post<\/span><\/a>: \u201cZhou reckons that the \u2018709 crackdown\u2019 is a major historical, political and legal event. Lawyers and human rights defenders involved in this event are important contributors in the history of the rule of law and human rights protection in China.\u201d Wang added that Zhou \u201cgreeted Fu [Zhenghua\u2019s] conviction with relief.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sun Lijun and Fu Zhenghua, formerly powerful ministers in China\u2019s state security apparatus, have been sentenced to death with a two year reprieve for corruption and other crimes. Such sentences are typically commuted to life in prison without parole. The timing of the verdicts and the allegation that Sun led a \u201cpolitical clique\u201d that was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1093,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10,14744,100,17753],"tags":[18015,949,1836,203,640,14650,16426,7506,16880,3823,15932,14058,6159,15579,18013,16819,4674],"class_list":["post-243693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-level-2-article","category-politics","category-recent-news","tag-20th-party-congress","tag-anti-graft","tag-bribery","tag-corruption","tag-death-penalty","tag-factions","tag-fu-zhenghua","tag-government-corruption","tag-guo-wengui","tag-high-level-corruption","tag-ministry-of-state-security","tag-party","tag-party-discipline","tag-rights-lawyers","tag-sun-lijun","tag-xi-anti-corruption-campaign","tag-xi-jinping","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\n<\/span>Sun was charged with using his official position in 2018 to manipulate stock trading to help a trader avoid losses. He also was accused of selling official jobs and abandoning his post during the COVID-19 outbreak.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>[…] The ruling party\u2019s anti-corruption agency accused Sun last year of having \u201cextremely inflated political ambition.\u201d It said he engaged in unspecified \u201csuperstitious activities.\u201d [<\/span>Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n