.png)
Chinese Regime paramount leader Hu Jintao (R) at a meeting with EU leaders in the "Great Hall of the People" in Beijing on February 15, 2012 (How Hwee Young/AFP/Getty Images); Bo Xilai (L), Secretary of Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, at the same place in March 2011. (Feng Li/Getty Images)
The year 2012 has already proven to be a difficult one for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Right before the turn of 2012, after months of resistance against the corruption of the local government, Wukan villagers kicked out the CCP chief and some of the CCP committee members and declared they would govern themselves. They have won the right to have their first free election in March 2012, although the CCP is working behind the scenes to try to spoil that for them.
On Jan. 23, in an interview with the BBC, the Chinese ambassador to the U.K., Liu Xiaoming, denied that he is a Communist Party member and China is a communist country. His membership in the CCP is public knowledge, and his denial made people wonder why he is trying to dissociate himself from the CCP.
As people were wondering what was going on with the CCP, another bomb dropped.
Unusual Visitor
All the top military generals made a public statement supporting Hu’s arrangements for the upcoming Chinese leadership changes.
On the evening of Feb. 6, four days after he lost his job as the police chief, Wang Lijun, still a deputy mayor of Chong Qing City although he had been demoted, escaped from the close watch of the Chongqing police. He dashed to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu City, four hours to the west by car.
According to Internet reports claiming to know what happened inside the consulate, he showed the U.S. consular officials evidence that his driver and staff had been arrested by his boss, Bo Xilai, the Party chief of Chongqing, and showed what harsh treatment had been given them.
Wang also spoke of Bo’s plans to assassinate him in order to keep him from revealing Bo’s criminal and political misconduct to Beijing.
Wang believed his life was in danger and requested asylum from the U.S. government. He spent over 24 hours inside the U.S. Consulate waiting for the U.S. government’s decision. The White House rejected his application but agreed to give him humanitarian assistance. Wang asked the U.S. consulate general to transfer him safely to Beijing.
Click this tag to read The Epoch Times’ collection of articles on the Chinese Regime in Crisis. Intra-CCP politics are a challenge to make sense of, even for veteran China watchers. Here we attempt to provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation.
Qiu Jing, deputy chief of the PRC’s Department of National Security, and Li Wei, a deputy chief of the PRC’s Department of Public Security, and five other senior officials arrived in Chengdu soon after the U.S. consul general notified Beijing on the morning of Jan. 7.
Meanwhile, Bo learned that Wang had hidden in the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. He ordered the mayor of Chongqing, Huang Qifan, to take over 70 police cars and tanks to catch Wang. They surrounded the consulate and blocked the road, demanding to take Wang back to Chongqing.
Beijing was furious that Bo had deployed forces cross the border since Chongqing is not part of Sichuan Province, where Chengdu is located. Beijing ordered the Sichuan national security force to disperse the Chongqing police. By noon on Jan. 7, the Chongqing police had left.
Wang walked out of the U.S. Consulate around 6 p.m. on Jan. 7, guarded by the Sichuan national security forces. About 8:30 in the morning of Jan. 8, Wang was on the CA 4113 flight to Beijing with seven senior Beijing officials.
Witnesses reported that when Wang walked out of the consulate, he shouted that he was a victim of Bo Xilai’s political ambition and criminal acts, and he would reveal everything he knew to take Bo and his wife down. He also indicated he had left documentation and proof overseas in case he lost his freedom or was killed.
Qiu reportedly passed to Wang a promise from Hu Jintao, the head of the CCP, that his case would be handled with justice.
From Asset to Liability
Wang had been Bo’s prodigy and right-hand man since he became the Party chief of Chongqing. He recruited Wang from Jinzhou City of Liaoning Province, where Bo sought to be the Party chief there.
Wang brought many of his close friends to help him in Chongqing. Under the name of “da he,” meaning cracking down on the mafias, Bo got rid of almost all of the officials promoted by the previous Party chiefs and confiscated property and money from thousands of business owners. Wang became a national hero and was promoted to deputy mayor within three short years.
Unfortunately for Bo and Wang, one of the previous Party chiefs of Chongqing was He Guoqiang, the current head of the Disciplinary Committee of the Central Chinese Communist Party Committee. He was very angry at how Wang and Bo treated his former associates in Chongqing and quietly began collecting evidence against Wang.
Continued on the next page: Challenger to Beijing
