Free Republic

China: Two Incidents Open Pandora’s Box – Analysis May 22, 2012 By Bhaskar Roy Two incidents, one regarding Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, and the other involving a blind human rights activist and self-taught lawyer Chen Guangchen, destroyed the myth that the Chinese system is a well oiled machine. Policy, individual, and bitter factional rivalries are kept sealed from the public to ensure the Party’s inviolability. This is the biggest political quake the country has experienced since the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. The new age of social communication, the internet, has also damaged the Party’s secrecy. Even people inside the...

The apparent murder of a Chinese-American man, along with three family members, at his home in Houston, Texas, this January was recently said by an established overseas Chinese newspaper to have some connection to the former Chinese security official Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of an intense corruption investigation.

Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the centre of China's biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said. More than 300 of Zhou's relatives, political allies, proteges and staff have also been taken into custody or questioned in the past four months, the sources, who have been briefed on the investigation, told Reuters. The sheer size of the asset seizures and the scale of the investigations into the people around Zhou - both unreported until...

It was an easy story to miss. On Feb. 22, the Beijing newspaper China Business Herald, citing an anonymous source, reported that PetroChina International Vice President Shen Dingcheng had been missing for weeks. As a single point of data, the story means little. But the disappearance of Shen (which dozens of other Chinese news outlets covered) is likely another piece of the still unfolding and maddeningly opaque saga of Zhou Yongkang. Shen, it turns out, served as Zhou's secretary for part of the 1990s. Formerly one of the most powerful men in China, Zhou ran China's state security apparatus as...

Gu Kailai Said to Have Named Zhou Yongkang as Coup Mastermind Gu Kailai, the wife of an ousted Chinese politician, may have given evidence against her husband's ally in order to save herself from the death penalty. Gu was arrested on April 10—the same day her husband Bo Xilai was sacked as Chongqing's Communist Party Secretary. Gu is likely to be convicted for the murder of British citizen and family friend Neil Heywood. According to online news service Boxun, an anonymous source on Thursday said that Gu Kailai exposed a plot between Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai to stage a...

Perks of being a Powerful Foreign Dignitary Zhou Yongkang, a member of China's Politburo Standing Committee and No 9 in power ranking, shaking hands with female traffic cops in Pyongyang on Oct. 10. He led the China's delegation to attend the celebration for the 65th anniversary of N. Korean ruling party's founding.