politics – A quick fix for a corrupt party boss

The disgraceful sacking of Shanghai’s party boss Chen Liangyu on Monday came not as a surprise, since, well, I announced it myself. What was for me a bit of a surprise were both the timing and the way Chen was disposed off.

When the 100-people strong investigation team from the central government left Shanghai earlier this month and turned around every possible stone, apart from the very obvious one Chen was hiding under, it seemed a bit as business like usual. Internal accounts were settled between the political factions fighting for power, but the Shanghai party chief seemed to be just a step too high up in the hierarchy, no matter to what faction he might belong to.

Most officials in his kind of position are left alone for three, four months and suddenly get a new job that takes them quietly out of the limelight. It used to be a good tradition that even your worst enemy would get an honorable way out of any situation. Why would the leadership-of-the-day do that? There would always be a moment in the future when their head would be on the hacking block and making too many enemies in the wrong way would call for revenge. Looking back might not be a favorite activity in China; people do develop these lapses of consciousness at awkward moments.

Not this time. The Chinese media went full out calling Chen unceremoniously ‘corrupt’, messing up his future career plan. Also the speed was remarkable. Obvious, Chen had to be out of the way before the upcoming political season and in that way president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao have apart from their formal power, also been rather quickly in gathering a real powerbase.

What is happening next? I recall a very funny piece in the Wall Street Journal some time ago that was typical American in so far that it tried to explain the Chinese internal struggle for the highest power as an American presidential election campaign. It identified two runners-up for Hu Jintao, more would be too confusing even for the intellectual audience of the WSJ. Of course they identified one as a conservative, the other as a progressive. One was for the capitalist way, the other for the Marxist way. One pro-foreign companies, the other against. One belonging to the red state Liaoning, the other to the blue state Zhejiang.

It would be very useful when life in China would be more like that caricature of the US, but I expect life to be a little bit harder to explain to the rest of the world. What we can expect is that one of the two people mentioned in the Wall Street Journal will be in a good position to replace Chen Liangyu in his powerful position. Chen might have forfeited the automatism that the party secretary would move to the central government, there is no reason to expect that the next one will also get himself (we talk about men, not about women yet) in a similar disadvantaged position.