by Jun Mai in South China Morning Post, Oct 1, 2017
A Communist Party chief in southern China and a possible future leader has voiced his support for Beijing’s decision to expel disgraced senior official Sun Zhengcai.
Hu Chunhua, party boss of Guangdong province, chaired a meeting of senior cadres on Saturday, at which he relayed details of the investigation into Sun and his subsequent dismissal, according to official media reports.
He also expressed his support for the decision and urged party members in Guangdong to learn a lesson from the case.
Hu – like Sun before his fall from grace in July as party boss of the major southwestern city of Chongqing – is seen by many as a possible future leader of China.
Both men were promoted to the 25-strong Politburo in 2012, when President Xi Jinping came to power. They were also named by the outgoing president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao as their preferred candidates to succeed Xi and Premier Li Keqiang.
The announcement of Sun’s expulsion from the party was made by Xinhua on Friday, and many individuals and organisations have since come forward to express their support for the decision and publicly criticise the once shining star.
The Chongqing party committee said there were serious lessons to be learned from the case, while the equivalent body in Jilin province, where Sun had previously been party chief, accused its former leader of “ignoring the development of Jilin and thinking only about his political future”.
In Beijing, the municipal party committee claimed that Sun’s discipline violations had started in the nation’s capital, where he rose from a researcher in the Ministry of Agriculture to become the city’s secretary general.
The Xinhua report on Friday said Sun had been handed over to prosecutors on corruption charges.
It earlier cited the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection investigation as saying that he had “abandoned the party’s aims, forfeited his political stand, and seriously trampled on the party’s political discipline and rules”.
He was accused of a long list of wrongdoings – from nepotism to leaking party secrets – it said, without providing details.
The announcement of his expulsion came less than three weeks before the Communist Party’s five-yearly congress at which there will be a major leadership reshuffle.http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2113552/provincial-chief-expresses-support-sun-zhengcais
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