Among the outcomes of the recently concluded 18th Party Congress in China was a subtle but important institutional shift: the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s security forces is now no longer in the Politburo Standing Committee, the Party’s seat of power consisting of seven men. But he will instead be a member of the Politburo, a body of 25 cadres that wields less unchecked authority.
For nearly a decade the agency that oversees almost all aspects of law enforcement, called the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC), was essentially a personal fiefdom controlled by men loyal to former regime leader Jiang Zemin. This included from 2002 Luo Gan, his trusted lieutenant, and from 2007 Zhou Yongkang, a grim-faced Jiang loyalist with deep ties to the oil industry.
The new leader is Meng Jianzhu, the current secretary of the public security bureau and a recent inductee to the Politburo.
The matter of who controls the PLAC is a crucial one for the CCP. The Party spends $110 billion on domestic security, more than the amount spent on national defense. The coercive apparatus managed by the committee is massive: it includes a system of courts, labor camps of various kinds, jails, detention centers, brainwashing centers, the prosecutor’s office, the police, a number of secret police forces, and the 1.5 million-strong People’s Armed Police—effectively a standing army.
Without oversight, whoever controls the security forces is able to play a decisive role in influencing domestic policy, as well as cultivate an army of client cadres who benefit from the enormous disbursal of funds overseen by the PLAC. Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist that escaped from house arrest earlier this year, reported much cash being handed out to the people who watched over him, many of whom had ties to local officials.
Power Struggle
The fact that the PLAC will now be controlled from the Politburo is a product of the political struggle between Hu Jintao’s leadership and the faction of former leader Jiang Zemin, which controlled the agency for so long, according to analysts of China’s blackbox politics.
Jiang needed to keep the security forces in his hands after initiating the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, an unprecedented security campaign that has required massive, sustained investment of state resources that many saw as needless and wasteful. Countless yuan have been spent in prosecuting the campaign, including the construction and expansion of labor camp and brainwashing facilities, the development of highly advanced surveillance systems, and mass mobilization of security personnel across the country to enforce the regime’s edict.
When Hu Jintao came to power in 2002, Jiang expanded the Standing Committee by two places, and inserted Luo Gan and Li Changchun, respectively heads of the PLAC and the Propaganda Ministry, to ensure that the campaign would not be disrupted. Zhou Yongkang took over from Luo Gan. But with the events of this year, there was no one else to give the job to.
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