The life sentence given to Zhou Yongkang, the once powerful security chief in China, marks a key moment in Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s wresting power over the regime apparatus, and his elimination of dangerous political opponents—but it’s likely not the end of the process.
Among the group of officials that Xi has stripped of power, isolated, arrested, and had prosecuted—all necessary actions in the context of Chinese Communist Party politics—Zhou Yongkang is not yet the top of the totem pole. There are two more men above him.
Zhou owes his entire career to Jiang Zemin, the regime chief in name from 1989 to 2002, and in fact far beyond that time. And Jiang, during that period, relied heavily on the wiles of his secretive adviser and political mastermind, Zeng Qinghong.
These two men remain at large, and if Xi Jinping’s campaign of political cleansing is to deepen, Jiang and Zeng would be the final targets.
