SinoInsight 1
On May 20, the General Offices of the CCP and the PRC State Council issued the “Opinion on Normalizing the Sweeping Black, Anti-triad Struggle and Consolidating Results of the Struggle” (關於常態化開展掃黑除惡鬥爭鞏固專項鬥爭成果的意見).
Key points in the Opinion include:
- The regime must maintain a “high-pressure posture” against criminal and triad forces” and “form an effective deterrent.”
- The regime must comprehensively strengthen supervision of industries and sectors, with a focus on financial lending, engineering and construction, transportation, market circulation, natural resources, ecology and the environment, cultural tourism, education and health care, information networks, as well as social security and other industries.
- The regime must continue to prevent and rectify problems pertaining to “village tyrants” and other criminal and triad forces interfering and disrupting local affairs (government, civilian, etc.), powerful local clans exerting “serious influence” to the detriment of local society, etc.
- Through Big Data, cloud computing, and other technological advancements, the regime has devised new ways of analyzing trends in crimes involving triads, and has established a new punishment mechanism to “strike early and strike small” (打早打小) against criminals and gangs.
- Party Central will regularly supervise and inspect the campaign to eradicate triads.
- The Opinion stressed that leading Party and state officials in local areas are the “number one in charge” of implementing the anti-triad struggle, and must “dare to take responsibility, dare to get tough, and support the struggle against triads and criminal elements.”
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At least 15 provincial officials (bureau level and below) were purged as part of Xi Jinping’s political and legal affairs apparatus “education and rectification” campaign between May 11 to May 21. Of the 15 officials, three were retired, two were set to retire, and another two had been transferred to the political and legal affairs apparatus in 2020.
May 11
1. Jiang Kaixin (age 56), deputy Party secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Commission, was investigated.
May 12
2. Li Yang (54), Party secretary and chief procurator of the Yibin City People’s Procuratorate in Sichuan Province, was investigated.
May 14
3. Sun Yimin (66, deputy bureau level, retired in June 2015), former director of the Fujian High Court Executive Bureau and court president, was investigated.
4. Yao Xishuang (59, approaching retirement), deputy Party secretary and deputy director of the Liaoning Provincial Department of Justice, was investigated.
5. Hui Congbing (58), deputy Party secretary of the Shandong Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Commission, voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and was placed under investigation.
6. Zhang Jian (56), former deputy director of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau and former Party secretary and director of the Binhai New Area Public Security Bureau, was investigated.
May 18
7. Huang Tiansheng (52), a Standing Committee member of the Yunfu (Guangdong Province) Municipal Party Committee and Party secretary of the Yunfu Political and Legal Affairs Commission, voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and was placed under investigation. Huang had only joined the political and legal affairs apparatus in February 2020, when he became Party secretary of the Yunfu Political and Legal Affairs Commission.
8. Abu (54), former member of the Tibet Autonomous Region Political and Legal Affairs Commission, Party secretary of the Tibet Department of Justice, first political commissar of the Tibet Prison Administration Bureau, and former Party secretary of Chamdo City, was investigated. Abu entered the political and legal affairs apparatus in December 2020.
May 19
9. Zhu Cong (59, approaching retirement), a second-level senior judge of the Xinjiang High Court, was investigated.
10. Tian Yuxi (67, deputy bureau level, retired in June 2014), former vice president of the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court, was investigated.
11. Yu Donghui (55), Standing Committee member of the Zhengzhou (Henan Province) Municipal Party Committee and Party secretary of the Zhengzhou Political and Legal Affairs Commission, was investigated.
May 20
12. Yang Yujun (55), chief procurator and Party secretary of the Shanghai Pudong New Area Procuratorate, voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and was placed under investigation.
May 21
13. Wang Chengliang (56), deputy mayor of Loudi City (Hunan Province) and director of the Loudi Municipal Public Security Bureau, was investigated.
14. Wang Yongheng (63, retired in May 2020), former president of the Yingkou City (Liaoning Province) Intermediate Court, was investigated.
15. Chen Xiaobing (57), former team leader of the Fujian Provincial Public Security Bureau’s Public Security Management Corps, was investigated.
OUR TAKE
1. Like the anti-corruption campaign, the CCP’s “sweeping black, anti-triad struggle” is at once tied to the intra-party factional struggle while simultaneously a genuine effort to root out collusion between officials and triads lest such relationships undermine the regime. The illicit cooperation of local officials with criminal elements has affected and continues to affect people’s livelihoods and normal economic business. Beijing is well aware of this and that criminal corruption undermines regime security; the recently released Opinion is aimed at stamping out such activity.
Also noteworthy is the Opinion’s call for “normalizing” (常態化) the “anti-triad struggle,” which hints that the official-criminal elements collusion problem is very serious. The use of “normalizing” also suggests that results of the “sweeping black” anti-triad campaign launched in 2018 have not met expectations, very possibly because local officials drag their feet in executing Xi’s orders from Zhongnanhai (政令不出中南海) as personal interests trump Party interests.
2. Recent investigations against officials in the political and legal affairs apparatus show that Xi’s “education and rectification” campaign, which we analyzed in recent newsletters, continues apace. To briefly recap, Xi is focused on cleaning up the Jiang faction-influenced political and legal affairs apparatus as part of his effort to further consolidate power and pave the way for a norm-breaking third term in office at the 20th Party Congress. Xi also needs political and legal affairs officials to be loyal to him and heed his bidding to ensure that “stability maintenance” is carried out in the regime to his specifications. Further, fully controlling the apparatus responsible for “stability maintenance,” colloquially termed the “knife handle” (刀把子), is imperative for Xi with the PRC currently facing a “perfect storm” of regime-threatening domestic and external crises.
As we analyzed previously, sustained “rectification” of the apparatus could see the purging of political and legal affairs officials become a new “political correctness,” and local government officials who are eager to earn political capital with the Xi leadership could start accruing political and legal affairs scalps (especially retired officials whose influence has waned) with an eye on quicker promotion and better career prospects.
SinoInsight 2
In recent weeks, the “lab leak” theory of the COVID-19 pandemic has been getting more mainstream attention:
May 2
Nicholas Wade, a former science writer at The New York Times, published an 11,000-word article where he made the case for the “lab leak” theory of COVID’s origin.
“Neither the natural emergence nor the lab escape hypothesis can yet be ruled out. There is still no direct evidence for either. So no definitive conclusion can be reached,” he wrote. “That said, the available evidence leans more strongly in one direction than the other. Readers will form their own opinion. But it seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence.”
May 13
A group of 18 scientists from leading colleges like Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge published a letter in top academic journal “Science” where they argued that there is insufficient evidence to conclude whether the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a lab accident or from animals.
“Yet more investigation is still needed to determine the origin of the pandemic. Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” the scientists wrote.
May 18
In an interview with former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he has believed so “for quite some time” in the “lab leak” theory, and proceeded to make his case.
May 19
The World Health Organization said in a press release that the World Health Assembly from May 24 to June 1 will focus on “ending the current pandemic and preventing the next one.”
May 20
New York-based “self-media” creator Jennifer Zeng called attention to comments made by Fudan University professor Chen Ping on Jan. 2, 2021. Zeng’s reports were later picked up by right-leaning media.
Chen said, “In 2020, China’s achievements in winning the trade war, tech war, and especially the biological war are epoch-making historical records … after the trade and bio war, the United States has been beaten out of shape.”
May 21
In an interview with “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Chinese virologist Li-meng Yan said that “the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese army” are behind SARS-CoV-2.
May 23
1. The Wall Street Journal reported the existence of a “previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report” claiming that “(t)hree researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.” The Journal added that “details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet” issued by the Trump administration.
Active and former officials familiar with the intelligence “expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment.” One person said that “it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.” Another person said, “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise.”
2. Jamie Metzl, an adviser to the WHO and Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, told Fox Business that the topic of the origins of the coronavirus “will come up” for discussion at the World Health Assembly meeting. “The big question for our government and governments around the world is, are we going to do everything possible to demand this kind of accountability from China … to get to the bottom of how this terrible pandemic began?”
OUR TAKE
1. In analyzing speeches by Xi Jinping, CCP official documents, Chinese language sources, and other material, we observed in our April 2020 special report on the coronavirus pandemic and factional struggle in the Party elite that “it is irresponsible to completely discount the ‘escaped from lab’ origin for the coronavirus.” Statements by the Trump administration State Department this January (see here and here) on the Wuhan Institute of Virology corroborate the findings in our report.
Mainstream scientists and science writers are now beginning to make the case for the “lab leak” theory in calling for investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Regardless of whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab or otherwise, increasing international attention to the “lab leak” theory is problematic for Xi Jinping. Xi, after all, has prominently claimed personal credit (see here and here) for the CCP’s “success” in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Notably, Xi said last February that he “made a request for the prevention and control of the novel coronavirus epidemic situation” during a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee on Jan. 7, or weeks before publicly acknowledging the existence of an epidemic, and thus taking responsibility for how the regime “controlled” the “epidemic situation.”
Xi’s factional rivals are unlikely to challenge him on the CCP’s handling of the pandemic because they all have a vested interest in propping up the regime’s “success” on that front. Moreover, the pandemic offers unique opportunities for the “survival-dominance” driven Party to advance its global domination agenda (以疫謀霸). So it does not make sense for Xi’s rivals to attack him on topics like fraudulent COVID data or a bungled coronavirus response, for example, because they are all in it together on the subject of “epidemic control.”
The origins of the coronavirus, however, is a separate matter. The Jiang faction and other elements of the “anti-Xi coalition” could point to global demands for more thorough investigations and the “lab leak” theory gaining greater international exposure to ramp up pressure on him internally. Xi is already facing a “perfect storm” of serious problems and does not need to be held accountable for yet another one, especially not when he is making a bid for a norm-breaking third office term and looking to secure favorable personnel reshuffles at the 20th Party Congress in 2022. Tensions are mounting for Xi ahead of 20th Party Congress discussions at the upcoming Beidaihe meeting during the July-August period.
3. The fact that international attention is shifting to the “lab leak” theory now—many months after the idea was first raised—is cause for suspicion. Mainstream explanations for this include:
- Scientific research into the nature of the coronavirus over a year has provided more evidence to lab escape rather than natural origin;
- It is now more “politically correct” to focus on China and the origins of the pandemic instead of how Washington handled the virus with President Donald Trump no longer in office;
- The Biden-Harris administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which have come under pressure in recent weeks over the handling of the coronavirus and other policies, can now “conveniently” redirect domestic ire to China and CCP culpability for the pandemic. Gestures to hold China accountable over the origins of COVID-19 will also improve Washington’s image on the PRC question.
In considering that the “lab leak” theory is gaining steam just weeks before a “sensitive” period for the CCP—its centennial celebrations in July—and how Xi Jinping stands to lose the most from this development, we believe that there is a possibility that Xi’s rivals could be working in tandem with Western establishment elements opposed to Xi abroad to undermine his leadership. We earlier noted the emergence of an “anti-Xi, not anti-CCP” U.S. strategy against China by a prominent establishment think-tank in January. Another establishment think-tank also identified the CCP’s centennial celebrations in July, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and the 20th Party Congress near the end of 2022 as “important events whose success is critical to Xi’s long-term political fortunes and national ambitions.”
Xi’s rivals would not find it too difficult to leak information such as the one featured in the “previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report” to an “international partner” of America. And given their sway over major media outlets, it is no challenge for Western establishment elements to “allow” the “lab leak” theory to percolate in the public discourse when it was previously tightly restricted.
4. Professor Chen Ping’s remarks about the CCP “winning the biological war” are being widely interpreted as a confession that the Party deliberately caused the pandemic. Regardless of the CCP’s actual role in the pandemic (it definitely covered up the outbreak and should be held accountable on that count), it is clear from Chen’s remarks that he is talking about “biological war” in the context of how Party propaganda is framing its coronavirus control effort, i.e. a “people’s war” and “struggle” against an invisible biological foe (SARS-CoV-2).
Hence, Chen Ping is not “confessing” that the CCP willfully unleashed the coronavirus on the world, but bragging in the “Amazing China!” (厲害了, 我的國) style of Renmin University’s Di Dongsheng about how the PRC “beat” America in its handling of the coronavirus. That being said, widespread misconception about what Chen said adds to the discourse about how the coronavirus could have escaped from a lab, inflames global anti-CCP sentiment, and increases pressure on Xi Jinping.
