News analysis
When provincial chiefs in the Chinese regime were publicly hailing Xi Jinping as the Chinese Communist Party’s new paramount leader, Xinjiang Party boss Zhang Chunxian instead told reporters, “Talk later.” Days earlier, a mutinous letter calling for Xi to resign had mysteriously appeared on a news website based in Xinjiang, China’s westmost province.
Now Zhang has been “reassigned,” state mouthpiece Xinhua reported, without revealing the former Xinjiang chief’s new post. Two overseas Chinese newspapers, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily and Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao, report Zhang will serve as deputy head of a secretive policy-making body that oversees Party ideology in Beijing.
Former Xinjiang Party Secretary Zhang Chunxian. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
