It’s not the conclusion to his most recent jaunt to Beijing that Qiu He, the deputy Communist Party secretary of Yunnan Province, in China’s far south, likely expected.
But a day after his appearance at a political meeting, it was announced on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Party’s antigraft police, that Qiu He was being investigated for “severe violations of discipline and law.”
For all intents and purposes, this means that his career is finished, and he is likely to be spirited away for secret interrogations, and possibly torture, to elicit confessions and a list of his co-conspirators.
The brief announcement—it was only 26 Chinese characters long—was posted at 1 p.m., just three hours after the closing of the National People’s Congress (NPC) session in Beijing, and less than 20 minutes after the press conference of Premier Li Keqiang that wrapped up the NPC session. The National People’s Congress is the Communist Party’s equivalent of a legislature, used to pass legislation and give the appearance of due process to policymaking.
The abrupt announcement was surprising even to Qiu’s colleagues—he, after all, attended the Yunnan Delegation Meeting of the NPC the previous day, according to Chinese news media Sina Weibo. He was also on the front page report of the Yunnan Daily as a delegate, and safely went back to the Yunnan Delegation station after the closing of the NPC session.
As the first sacked official following the political sessions, in particular in such an unceremonious manner, Qiu has become the focus of media attention in China. Several outlets quoted insider sources saying that the investigation relates to Kunming City’s urban construction system. Kunming is the capital of southwestern China’s Yunnan Province.
Qiu heavily promoted the urbanization and forced house demolitions in Kunming—massive projects like that are often used to channel vast public funds into private hands, and hand out fat contracts to loyal allies.
During Qiu’s term from 2007 to 2011 as head of Kunming’s Communist Party Committee, over 6 million citizens faced forced evictions from their homes, which were then demolished, said Yang Weijun, former vice chairman of Yunnan Political Consultative Conference (an advisory body to the Communist Party) in an interview with Sina.
