In recent weeks, many senior officials in the Chinese regime’s security apparatus have been reshuffled or suddenly dismissed from their posts. Most significantly, all provincial security leaders who took office with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2012 have now been replaced.
To those more familiar with the conventional view on Xi and the operations of the Communist Party, Xi’s motivation for making the personnel changes might seem imponderable. Why fix a security apparatus that appears to be doing a good job in suppressing the populace?
Analysts of elite Chinese politics, however, see a noteworthy development. They argue that Xi is finally making progress toward fixing a bureaucracy that does not listen to him. They also note that the changes will not result in a liberal, rule-of-law judicial system, given the nature of the Chinese regime.
‘Deep State’
Developments in Chinese politics are notoriously hard to read, owing to the opaque operations of the Chinese leadership. Reading the Xi era is tougher, given several instances when what Xi said and how the Chinese bureaucracy responded were at odds.
A recent and high-profile example is the so-called “Lei Yang incident.”
In May 2016, five Beijing police officers wrongly arrested young Chinese environmentalist Lei Yang. The police beat him, and he later died in custody.
The Lei Yang incident sparked a huge public outcry. Xi openly called for a “fair and just” handling of the case.
Following the conclusion of investigations, however, a Beijing procuratorate found the five police officers not guilty.
