SinoInsight 1
On March 28, the Standing Committee of Guangdong’s 13th People’s Congress voted to appoint officials Zhang Hu and Qin Weizhong as vice governors of the province. The Standing Committee also accepted Guangdong vice governor Lin Shaochun’s resignation request. Lin was then transferred to Inner Mongolia to serve as the autonomous region’s deputy Party secretary.
OUR TAKE
1. Per CCP promotion norms and barring any unexpected incidents, Lin Shaochun is on track to become the chairman of Inner Mongolia’s local government (a ministerial-level position; Lin is currently at the vice ministerial-level).
2. On paper, Lin Shaochun received a promotion. However, his career prospects could have dimmed with the transfer to Inner Mongolia.
Official promotion is dependent on political results, which includes GDP growth. Last year, Guangdong’s GDP ranked first in the country while Inner Mongolia ranked 21st out of China’s 31 provinces and regions. Lin will likely find it hard to turn around Inner Mongolia’s economy given that the landlocked province does not possess the easy economic conditions of coastal Guangdong (Shenzhen, one of the top commercial cities, is also in Guangdong). Unless Lin finds a way to significantly improve economic conditions, his prospects of career advancement are not bright.
3. Guangdong is important to the CCP because it is an economic powerhouse, a region to push reform and opening up, and a base of united front work (Shenzhen neighbors Hong Kong). Because Guangdong is home to several major dialect groups (Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew) whose mother tongue differs greatly from Mandarin, Party Central typically relies on native Guangdong officials to control the province. Thus, native Guangdong officials are very powerful locally, particularly the Chaoshan Gang and the Hakka Gang.
During Jiang Zemin’s reign, the native Guangdong powers sided with the Jiang faction. Many native Guangdong officials were later purged after Xi Jinping took office and launched a rectification campaign to clear out the Jiang faction influence from the officialdom. Among the purged include senior native officials like Zhu Mingguo, Liu Zhigeng, Wan Qingliang, and Li Jia.
4. Lin Shaochun was born in Guangdong’s Shantou City and is a native Guangdong official. With his transfer to Inner Mongolia, only three native officials remain out of the 19 members of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee. Of the three native officials, two are also from Shantou; one is the secretary-general of the provincial Party Committee (last-ranked member) and the other two are deputy governors.
5. The personnel changes in the Guangdong local government after this year’s Two Sessions mark the decline of native official forces in the province.
SinoInsight 2
On March 27, China’s Ministry of Public Security held an enlarged meeting to discuss the topic of “resolutely supporting the Party Central’s decision on handling Meng Hongwei.” Zhao Kezhi, the public security minister and Xi ally, chaired the meeting.
The meeting stressed that “Meng Hongwei’s pernicious influence must be comprehensively and thoroughly eliminated.” The meeting also noted that it is necessary for the public security ministry to “thoroughly eliminate the legacy of Zhou Yongkang and Meng Hongwei” from the realm of “ideology, politics, organization, and style,” without leaving “gaps or dead ends.” Further, the ministry would be carrying out further investigations into its own ranks.
OUR TAKE
1. The public security ministry’s enlarged meeting signals a continuing of rectification work. In our China 2019 outlook, we wrote that “Xi will likely continue to clean out the political and legal affairs apparatus, the propaganda apparatus, the intelligence apparatus, and the financial system.”
2. In early March, Hong Kong media reported that Zheng Baigang, former head of the public security ministry’s Bureau of Exit and Entry Administration and confidant of Meng Hongwei, was placed under shuanggui (an internal disciplinary process).
According to publicly available information, Zheng was transferred to the Bureau of Exit and Entry Administration after 2010 to serve as its director and Party secretary. Per the public security ministry’s website, Zheng’s last public activities were held in March 2016. In April 2016, Qu Yunhai took over Zheng Baigang as director of the Bureau of Exit and Entry Administration.
On July 18, 2018, Zheng Baigang made a public appearance under the title of “Secretary of Integrated Law Enforcement and Security Cooperation Center.” As of March 7, 2019, the Center’s official website continues to carry information about Zheng Baigang. The Integrated Law Enforcement and Security Cooperation Center was established in December 2011, and then public security vice minister Meng Hongwei attended the unveiling ceremony on behalf of the ministry.
From the above information, it appears that Zheng Baigang may be affiliated with the national anti-terrorism leading group when it was helmed by Meng Hongwei, and has deep links with Meng.
The enlarged meeting of the Ministry of Public Security noted that it is not permissible for “one person to call the shots,” or “turn the office he is in charge of into a ‘personal fiefdom,’” or “practice cronyism, favoritism, buy or sell offices, or engage in bribery.” If Meng Hongwei is guilty of the above, then Zheng Baigang could really have been placed under investigation.
3. The expulsion of Meng Hongwei from the Party and the enlarged meeting of the public security ministry suggest that the CCP factional struggle is presently very intense. With the ongoing factional struggle, Xi Jinping will have headaches in implementing and fulfilling whatever he promises that China will do under the Sino-U.S. trade deal, should one be reached.
