EXCLUSIVE: China’s Top Leaders Split Over Handling of Security Czar

The Beijing source said the top leaders have known Zhou’s crimes for a long time but hesitate in exposing them for fear that revealing their scale would be so shocking to people that it might spell the end of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The attempted defection on Feb. 6 of former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun (first domino) has set in motion accelerating changes in the Party hierarchy. Former Chongqing Party head Bo Xilai (second domino) was sacked on March 15 and then put under investigation on April 10. Now, Zhou Yongkang (third domino), the powerful domestic security czar, is rumored to be on the ropes. Illustration by The Epoch Times, photos by  Feng Li/Getty Images and Liu Jin/AFP/Getty Images

As the political star of former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai has recently fallen in dramatic style, the spotlight has hit his ally, Zhou Yongkang, head of the domestic security apparatus. Zhou Yongkang is chief of the powerful Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC) and a member of Politburo Standing Committee—one of the nine men who holds ultimate power in the Communist Party.

Top leaders of the Party are currently split over how to publicly deal with Zhou and the investigation surrounding him, a source from Beijing told The Epoch Times. On April 12, the Korean paper Chosun Ilbo quoted information leaked from Beijing’s circle of foreign affairs and reported that on the evening of March 19, the Committee for Disciplinary Inspection had begun an investigation of Zhou.