SinoInsight 1
On April 28, Daily NK News, a website that carries news from within North Korea, reported that a five-minute video claiming that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had died during an on-the-spot inspection started circulating in the area of North Korea bordering China. The video also claims that Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un and first deputy director of North Korea’s propaganda department, would succeed him. A North Korean source told Daily NK that the video “looks like it was broadcast by Korean Central Television (KCTV) and entered the country through China.”
On April 30, Daily NK quoted a North Korean source saying that North Korean authorities are “hunting down whoever brought the video over the border.” However, the authorities have not made a “centralized response” to silence rumors about Kim Jong Un, unlike in the past where the authorities would rapidly move to shut down speculation.
Kim Jong Un’s health has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15. Kim has not been seen in public since April 11. A popular rumor being circulated is that Kim suffered a heart attack and is now either dead, comatose, or in a vegetative state after a botched surgery.
The South Korean government maintains that Kim is “alive and well.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration has released ambivalent messaging on Kim’s status. On April 24, United States President Donald Trump said at a press conference that a report that Kim is “gravely ill” is “incorrect.” On April 29, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News, “We haven’t seen him. We don’t have any information to report today, we’re watching it closely.” Pompeo added, “There is a real risk that there will be a famine, a food shortage, inside of North Korea too. We’re watching each of those things closely, as they have a real impact on our mission set, which is to ultimately denuclearize North Korea.”
OUR TAKE
1. In the April 27 edition of our newsletter, we noted that “Kim might not be in such a bad condition as rumored” based on an assessment of how the CCP regime has responded to information about Kim Jong Un’s health.
Assuming that the Daily NK reports on April 28 and April 30 about the video of Kim’s death that entered North Korea from China are accurate, then we believe that the “Kim Jong Un health” incident could be the product of two possible scenarios.
In the first scenario, Kim has genuine health problems and the CCP is taking advantage of the “vacuum” in the Kim regime to achieve two broad goals:
- In the April 27 newsletter, we noted that the CCP fears losing North Korea as an ally. To drive North Korea closer to the PRC, the CCP will find it beneficial to induce chaos and panic in North Korea by spreading rumors about Kim’s health status and “death.” Because the PRC has greater access to North Korea and Kim, the CCP would be among the first to know the actual status of Kim’s health and then abuse its informational advantage to influence North Koreans through disinformation.
- We also noted previously that the CCP needs to manufacture chaos to keep the world distracted “so that it can put off being held accountable for the coronavirus outbreak and buy itself time to address its many domestic problems.” Thus, it benefits the CCP to spread disinformation about Kim’s health to keep the world on edge about the succession issue in North Korea and the fate of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. As the world focuses on North Korea, the CCP would hope that the issue of the coronavirus will be quietly “forgotten.” Also, should another crisis break out on the Korean Peninsula (especially a crisis involving succession issues and nuclear weapons), the U.S., South Korea, and Japan will likely look to the PRC to stabilize the situation, and would be less willing to adopt an overly confrontational posture towards the CCP.
In the second scenario, the PRC and North Korea could be collaborating in putting on a show to induce global chaos and panic in the world through a manufactured incident. Kim may or may not be having real health problems. To win Kim’s cooperation, the PRC could have promised to help North Korea with coronavirus issues and its food crisis; an April 28 Reuters report noted that a North Korean delegation was due to arrive in Beijing this week to “discuss food supplies and trade issues as the coronavirus pandemic has severely disrupted the country’s food supply.”
2. The CCP would believe that now is an opportune moment to play the North Korean card because U.S.-South Korean military readiness has been affected by the coronavirus and an impasse in a bilateral defense cooperation agreement that expired on Dec. 31, 2019 (Special Measures Agreement). The lack of a new agreement meant that U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) had to furlough about half of the 9,000-strong USFK Korean National employee workforce on March 31. However, President Trump told Reuters in an exclusive interview published on April 29 that South Korea had agreed to pay the U.S. more money for a new defense cooperation agreement. Regardless, the U.S. and South Korea are presently at a disadvantage to deal with a crisis on the Korean Peninsula given their disagreement, and this situation benefits the CCP.
SinoInsight 2
April 29 saw several personnel reshuffles at the PRC’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Ministry of Justice, and the Supreme People’s Court.
Incoming:
- Tang Yijun, Liaoning governor and deputy Party Secretary, was transferred to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to serve as minister of justice and deputy Party Secretary of the MoJ’s Party group.
- Huang Runqiu, deputy minister of ecology and environment, was promoted to minister of ecology and environment. Huang belongs to the Democratic Party in China and is not a CCP member.
- He Rong, deputy Party Secretary of Shaanxi Province, was appointed as deputy Party Secretary of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) Party group and executive vice president of the SPC (a ministerial-level appointment).
Outgoing:
- Fu Zhenghua (64-years-old), minister of justice, left his post.
- Jiang Bixin (64-years-old), vice president of the SPC, left his post.
- Four judges in the SPC were removed from their posts, including a member of the SPC’s judicial committee.
OUR TAKE
1. The April 29 personnel reshuffles were announced around the same time as the confirmation of the dates of the Two Sessions. At a glance, the personnel reshuffles are regular changes to replace officials that are near retirement age or fill up vacant posts. A closer look at the reshuffles show that they are related to the factional struggle.
2. We predicted that Tang Yijun would succeed Fu Zhenghua as justice minister in the April 23 edition of this newsletter. In that newsletter, we also examined Tang and Fu’s respective factional backgrounds.
In the CCP regime, the typical retirement age of officials at the ministerial-level is 65. However, ministerial-level officials are allowed to serve on for another three years past 65 if their office term has not expired, and this is the usual arrangement. Going by the usual arrangement, Fu Zhenghua is only slated to retire in 2023 when his five-year office term expires at that year’s Two Sessions. We believe that Fu’s unusually “early” retirement is linked with Xi Jinping’s recent cleansing of the political and legal affairs apparatus.
If Fu is “fortunate” (Xi has no plans to purge him at the moment), he could be appointed to the National People’s Congress Supervisory and Judicial Affairs Committee (a sinecure position) at the upcoming Two Sessions, or could be allowed to retire without fanfare. Based on our assessment, however, Fu still faces significant levels of political risk even if he is granted a “soft landing.”
3. We wrote in the April 23 edition of this newsletter, “Officials in the political and legal affairs apparatus who oppose Xi face high levels of political risk. Should Xi maintain his advantage in the factional struggle, he could even order an investigation into PRC chief justice Zhou Qiang, and possibly during the 2020 Two Sessions at the earliest (May or June).” The recent reshuffles at the SPC affirm the political trend that we earlier identified.
Xi Jinping has not overseen many personnel changes or purges at the SPC since taking office in 2012. In August 2015, SPC vice president Xi Xiaoming was investigated. Aside from Xi, two other officials in the SPC’s leadership group were transferred to other positions, while five others left office after reaching retirement age.
There are currently 14 officials in the SPC’s leadership group, five of whom are over 60. Four of the five who are over 60 rank among the top seven officials in the SPC. Should these officials retire or move to a “second-line” sinecure position, there will be another round of personnel changes in the SPC. (Typically, officials at the vice ministerial-level who are 60 and older will be transferred to less important posts or sinecure positions.)
The career trajectory and experience of He Rong, the new SPC Party group deputy and executive vice president of the SPC, suggests that she is being groomed for even higher office. From 1984 to 2011, she rose up the ranks in the Beijing Municipal High People’s Court, and eventually held the posts of court vice president and deputy secretary of the court’s Party group. From December 2011 to March 2017, she became one of the SPC’s vice presidents. He Rong was later transferred to Shaanxi Province to head the provincial discipline inspection committee and was promoted a year later to deputy Party Secretary of Shaanxi Province. It is likely that she will continue to be promoted, and could even be groomed to replace SPC chief justice Zhou Qiang.
4. Li Ganjie, the minister of ecology and environment before Huang Runqiu, was appointed governor of Shandong Province in early April. Both Li and Huang are considered to be “technocratic” officials and do not have strong factional alignments. Their promotion is in line with the trend of Xi Jinping promoting “technocrats” in recent years as he seeks to erode the Jiang Zemin faction’s influence in the CCP officialdom and put officials who are more likely to duly implement his orders in senior positions in the regime.
Meanwhile, Gong Zheng, the official whom Li Ganjie had replaced in Shandong, became deputy mayor and acting mayor of Shanghai on March 23. Gong had replaced Ying Yong, who was appointed Party Secretary of Hubei Province in the wake of coronavirus-related personnel reshuffles in Hubei. Both Gong and Ying are considered allies of Xi Jinping.
By placing allies in key areas and installing “technocrats” in senior government positions, Xi is clearly looking to further consolidate his control over the regime with his latest personnel moves.
