Chinese military
delegates arrive at the Great Hall of the People before the closing
session of the National People's Congress on March 16, 2016 in Beijing,
China. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Two close associates of retired, influential military
generals were recently arrested, according to overseas Chinese news
outlets, a development that, judging by previous patterns in recent
political purges, may herald the opening of investigations into their
former bosses and foreshadow the indictment of Communist Party godfather
figure Jiang Zemin.
On May 20, major general Liao Xijun was arrested, sources told
Chinese language publication World Journal and South China Morning Post,
an English language Hong Kong daily. The move was sanctioned by the
prosecuting department of the Central Military Commission—the communist
regime’s highest military governing body—and commander-in-chief and
Party leader Xi Jinping, the reports said. Investigators raided Liao’s
properties and seized an estimated 37 million yuan (about $5.6 million)
worth of valuables.
A week later, World Journal reported that major general Zhu Xinjian,
currently a member of the Central Military Commission’s science and
technology commission, was placed under “shuanggui,” a strict internal
Party disciplinary procedure designed to extract confessions from
cadres.
The arrest of Liao Xijun and Zhu Xinjian is significant because they
are closely connected with two top military officials. Liao Xijun is the
younger brother of former General Logistics Department head Liao
Xilong, while Zhu was the “mishu,” or secretary, of former General
Armament Department chief Li Jinai.
In turn, the two senior military cadres are long-time political clients of Jiang Zemin, the former chief of the Communist Party.
Building Power
In the Chinese regime, there’s a disconnect between official position
and power—the latter is highly personal, and is not guaranteed by the
institution or constitution.
So being a civilian with no military connections, Jiang had to spend
more than a decade after formally becoming the head of the military
commission to foster supporters and retool military departments in a bid
to consolidate his hold over the military, and see that it obeys his
will.
Liao Xilong. (CCTV)
At an important political conclave in 2002, Jiang promoted loyalist
Liao Xilong to director of the General Logistics Department, one of the
chief branches of the Chinese military. Li Jinai, another loyalist, was
made director of the General Armaments Department, a new military arm
created by Jiang four years previously to de-emphasize the role of three
other general headquarters branches and strengthen his grip on the
People’s Liberation Army.
Li Jinai. (CCTV)
Liao and Li appear to have been advanced to their respective
important military posts because they had played crucial roles promoting
and sustaining Jiang’s persecution campaign against Falun Gong, perhaps
the most severe campaign of human rights abuse in China.
Political Framing
In 1999, Jiang Zemin was bent on “eradicating” practitioners of Falun
Gong, a popular traditional meditation practice that espouses the moral
teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. In a furious
letter to fellow leaders in April, he described Falun Gong as “the most
serious political incident” since the Tiananmen protests a decade
earlier.
By all accounts, the constituency of people he had targeted for elimination was vast and possessed significant social capital.
A Party survey found 70 million people of all ages and professions
practicing Falun Gong, according to Hao Fengjun, a former public
security officer and defector, speaking to journalist Ethan Gutmann. Wang Youqun,
the secretary of former Party internal disciplinarian and Politburo
Standing Committee member Wei Jianxing, often practiced Falun Gong’s
five sets of exercises in the work compound, and wore a lapel pin with
the Falun emblem to Communist Party meetings.
Jiang’s call to suppress Falun Gong was unpopular at the top level of
Party leadership. “When it came to suppressing Falun Gong, six of the
seven Standing Committee members opposed it,” Xin Ziling,
a former Chinese defense official with ties to high-level, moderate
Party cadres, told New Tang Dynasty Television (NTD) in an interview in
April 2015. NTD and this newspaper are subsidiaries of the New
York-based Epoch Media Group.
Jiang sought help from then commander of the Chengdu Military Region
Liao Xilong, an officer known for his ambition. Sensing the opportunity
for promotion, Liao oversaw the fabrication of documents that implicated
Falun Gong practitioners in “involvement in politics” and plotting to
“overthrow the Party.” Jiang used these documents to help force through
his campaign, unleashing a Cultural Revolution-style suppression of
Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, according to a correspondent to Epoch
Times, who gained the news from a source in the Chengdu Military Region
in 2007.
Dark Operations
The persecution of Falun Gong is nearing its 17th year. According to
Minghui.org, a clearinghouse for firsthand information about the
persecution, over 3,900 practitioners were killed by torture and abuse.
Hundreds of thousands of others have been placed under some form of
detention.
Jiang was able to escalate his personal campaign because he promised
wealth and high rank to Party officials who took on an active role in
arresting and forcing Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith.
“You must show your toughness in handling Falun Gong … it will be your
political capital,” Jiang told the ambitious Politburo member Bo Xilai,
according to Jiang Weiping, a veteran Chinese journalist.
Party cadres in the military played a particularly heinous part in the persecution, and were duly rewarded.
From the General Armaments Department, Li Jinai was later moved to
the most prestigious General Political Department. He was also appointed
head of the military’s “610 Office,” an extralegal, Gestapo-like
organization that supervises the persecution of Falun Gong
practitioners.
During Liao Xilong’s stint as head General Logistics Department, the
military hospitals that his department oversees appear to have been
involved in a dark, grisly operation.
Speaking to an undercover investigator from the NGO World
Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in October
2014, former Chinese defense minister and General Staff Department chair
Liang Guanglie suggested that the General Logistics Department was involved in transporting organs procured from live harvesting.
Last year, Bai Shuzhong,
the former health minister of the General Logistics Department, told
undercover human rights investigators that “Chairman Jiang … gave an
instruction … to sell kidneys, do operations,” and added that his
department did “a lot of anti-Falun Gong work” after “Chairman Jiang
issued the order.”
“We directly control the military medical universities, they are
directly affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army’s General
Logistics Department, and they received repeated orders, because Jiang
paid a lot attention to this matter back then, put a lot of emphasis on
this matter,” Bai said.
Whistlerblowers exposed live organ harvesting in 2006, and researchers have since concluded that hundreds of thousands of victims, the bulk of whom were Falun Gong practitioners, have been killed for their organs since 2000.
Official Purge
As unexpected political changes took place in China, however, many persecutors suddenly found themselves behind bars.
Wang Lijun, the former head of the police in Chongqing and Bo Xilai’s
right hand man, attempted to defect to the United States consulate in
Chengdu, and revealed to the Americans a plot
by Bo and then security czar Zhou Yongkang to displace incoming Party
leader Xi Jinping. Wang was arrested after his defection was refused,
and Bo was purged soon afterward.
Xi started an anti-corruption campaign shortly after succeeding Hu
Jintao as Party leader, and one by one, many of Jiang’s allies and their
cronies were investigated and placed in detention. Among the most
prominent scalps include Li Dongsheng, the former head of the 610 Office; military generals Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong; and Zhou Yongkang, a powerful Party cadre many considered untouchable.
In the case of Zhou Yongkang, his former aides were arrested before
formal investigations of his person was announced, and Hong Kong
political publications persistently carried rumors that the Party’s
internal disciplinary agency was gathering evidence against him.
What is now happening to Liao Xilong and Li Jinai mirrors the purge
of Zhou. Li’s former aide Zhu Xinjian has been purged, and the Liao’s
younger brother Liao Xijun is reported in custody, as well as his
adopted daughter and mistress, according to the Chinese language edition
of German broadcasting service Deutsche Welle.
In March, overseas Chinese news publications reported that Liao had
handed over 40 million yuan (about $6 million) in “questionable funding”
that he had accumulated in a 10-year period to the military’s internal
disciplinary unit.
Power Shift
Recently, Xi Jinping appears to be making noticeably inroads into
establishing a case against Jiang Zemin, and weakening his influence.
The arrest of Liao Xilong and Li Jinai’s associates come on the back
of recent investigations of Shanghai, Jiang’s longtime home base.
Internal Party disciplinary inspectors recently concluded a two-month sweep
of 28 government agencies in Shanghai, including many connected with
members of the Jiang family. And in 2015, investigators probed major
state-owned companies controlled by Jiang Mianheng and Jiang Miankang,
the elder and younger sons of Jiang Zemin. The probing of family
members of a former Party leader is extremely rare and is another
indication that Xi may ultimately set crosshairs on Jiang himself.
A major overhaul of the military has also allowed Xi to remove Jiang’s lingering influence and replace Jiang’s supporters with his own.
In January, Xi dissolved the General Logistics Department and the
General Armaments Department, creating in their place the Logistics
Support Department and the Equipment Development Department. Xi then
installed Zhao Keshi and Zhang Youxia, two generals loyal to him, as the
respective directors of these two new units.
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