March 29, 2024

China to Investigate Top Economic Policy Maker

The agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party, which runs corruption inquiries involving senior officials, said Mr. Liu was “suspected of grave violations of discipline, and is now under investigation by the organization,” according to a report from Xinhua, the state news agency.

The report came more than five months after the journalist, Luo Changping, boldly challenged Mr. Liu and investigators by publicly accusing Mr. Liu of shady business deals and other wrongdoing like threatening to kill his mistress and overstating his academic qualifications. Mr. Luo laid out the charges on the Internet in early December. They lingered there, despite a denial by a spokesman for Mr. Liu and the power of censors to erase the postings, which fanned a public uproar.

Yet for months it appeared that Mr. Liu might survive the scandal. Since 2008, he has been a deputy chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, an agency that oversees many areas of economy policy. Until March, he was also head of the National Energy Administration, and he made several public appearances after Mr. Luo made the accusations, according to Chinese news reports.

The Xinhua report did not detail the official allegations against Mr. Liu. But Mr. Luo, a deputy editor of Caijing Magazine in Beijing, said he was sure they were related to his accusations.

“I know there’s a direct connection, but I can’t say any more,” Mr. Luo said in a telephone interview.

“I had felt panicky before because nothing was happening, but I’ve breathed a sigh of relief now that this has happened,” he said, referring to the inquiry.

Mr. Liu, 58, could become a trophy in the effort by China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, to persuade disenchanted citizens that he is serious about ending abuses by officials. Since becoming party chief in November, Mr. Xi has vowed to clamp down on corruption, extravagance and self-enrichment; he has said both “flies” and “tigers” — junior and senior officials — would come under scrutiny.

Other officials under investigation for corruption and other crimes include Bo Xilai, a former Politburo member whose wife, Gu Kailai, was convicted and in August given a death sentence, which was then suspended, on charges of murdering a British businessman. In April, the former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, was charged with corruption and abuse of power.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection wields broad powers to detain officials and pursue secretive inquiries. In serious cases, the commission can hand officials over to the police and prosecutors to be investigated on criminal charges, which almost always end in convictions and sentences by party-run courts.

Despite Mr. Luo’s apparent vindication, Chinese leaders are wary of letting the public seize the initiative in fighting corruption. “What I really hope to see is more change at the institutional level to fight corruption, not just focusing on individual cases,” Mr. Luo said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/world/asia/china-eyes-liu-tienan-an-official-challenged-by-a-journalist.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Changing of the Guard: Signals of a More Open Economy in China

The trip was Mr. Xi’s first outside Beijing since becoming party chief on Nov. 15. Mr. Xi visited a private Internet company on Friday and went to Lotus Hill Park on Saturday to lay a wreath at a bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping, the leader who opened the era of economic reforms in 1979, when Shenzhen was designated a special economic zone. Mr. Deng famously later visited the city in 1992 to encourage reviving those economic policies after they had stalled following the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989.

“Reform and opening up is a guiding policy that the Communist Party must stick to,” Mr. Xi said, according to Phoenix Television, one of several Hong Kong news organizations that covered the trip. “We must keep to this correct path. We must stay unwavering on the road to a prosperous country and people, and there must be new pioneering.”

In the months before the transition, there were widespread calls, including from people close to Mr. Xi, to adopt more liberal economic policies and even to experiment with greater political openness as a way for the party to maintain its rule. Without much success so far, reformers have long been encouraging the leadership to move toward a more sustainable growth model for China, one that relies more on domestic consumption rather than infrastructure investment and exports, and where state enterprises play less of a role.

Mr. Xi, known as a skillful consensus builder, has kept his ideas carefully veiled throughout his career, but his trip to Shenzhen is the strongest sign yet that he may favor more open policies. In a speech in Beijing on Nov. 29, Mr. Xi spoke of the “Chinese dream” of realizing the nation’s “revival,” which, besides being a call for renewal, also signaled strong nationalist leanings.

Mr. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revered senior official handpicked by Mr. Deng to help shape the new economic policies and oversee the creation of the Shenzhen zone. Mr. Xi’s mother lives in Shenzhen, and he visited her on his trip, according to Hong Kong news reports.

“If he indeed went to Shenzhen, that means he intends to make reform a subject of priority,” said Li Weidong, a liberal political analyst. “That would really be a phenomenon.”

Mr. Li cautioned, though, that the so-called reform policies that followed Mr. Deng’s 1992 southern tour, in his view, “ended up being fake” because China’s boom resulted in widespread corruption and the expansion of state enterprises at the expense of private entrepreneurship.

When Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, became party chief in 2002, he was seen by many as a potential reformer, but his tenure was marked by conservative policies. For his first trip outside Beijing as party chief, Mr. Hu went in December 2002 to Xibaipo, a hallowed site for the revolution, where he reiterated a speech given by Mao Zedong.

Over the weekend, video footage from Phoenix Television showed a line of minibuses and police cars winding its way through Shenzhen. Mr. Xi and other officials walked outdoors in dark suits. The party’s official news organizations did not immediately report on the trip, but some prominent mainland Chinese news Web sites cited the Hong Kong reports.

Mr. Xi’s early moves as party leader seem aimed at emphasizing national “revival,” a theme he highlighted when he appeared on Nov. 29 with the party’s new seven-man Politburo Standing Committee in a history museum at Tiananmen Square. According to People’s Daily, the party mouthpiece, Mr. Xi stood in front of an exhibition called “The Road to Rejuvenation” and said, “After the 170 or more years of constant struggle since the Opium Wars, the great revival of the Chinese nation enjoys glorious prospects.”

He added: “Now everyone is discussing the Chinese dream, and I believe that realizing the great revival of the Chinese nation is the greatest dream of the Chinese nation in modern times.”

The emphasis on a “Chinese dream” is particular to Mr. Xi, and could prove to be a recurring motif throughout his tenure. The notion of a grand revival — “fu xing” in Mandarin — has been popular with Chinese leaders for at least a century, but Mr. Xi appears to be tapping more deeply into that nationalist vein than his recent predecessors, perhaps recognizing that traditional Communist ideology no longer has popular appeal.

Patrick Zuo contributed research.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/world/asia/chinese-leaders-visit-to-shenzhen-hints-at-reform.html?partner=rss&emc=rss