This year’s first ministerial-level “tiger” fell from the horse
At 16:00 on March 21, the website of the CPC Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Shen Deyong, member of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee and director of the Social and Legal Affairs Committee, was suspected of serious violations of discipline and law and is currently under investigation.
Shen Deyong was the deputy secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Supreme Court (minister-level) and executive vice president, and is the first minister-level official to be investigated in 2022.
On June 22, 2018, Shen Deyong, the executive vice president of the Supreme Court of the Communist Party of China, was one year away from retiring and was removed from the positions of vice president, member of the adjudication committee, and judge.
According to public information, Shen Deyong served as vice president of the Jiangxi Provincial High Court of the Communist Party of China, and deputy secretary of the Jiangxi Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection; in October 1998, he entered the Supreme Court and served as a member of the party group and vice president; from November 2006 to April 2008 Since April 2008, he has served as deputy secretary of the Party Leadership Group (minister level) and executive vice president of the Supreme Court.
During Jiang Zemin’s reign, the two high-level CCP committees (the Supreme Court and the Supreme Procuratorate) were always under the control of the Political and Legal Committee. The two secretaries of the Political and Legal Committee were Huang Ju and Luo Gan. Jiang Zemin’s group has been suppressing Falun Gong since July 1999, and the two high schools have followed Jiang to create a large number of cases of illegally convicting Falun Gong practitioners.
Since October 1998, Shen Deyong has served as the vice president of the Supreme Court, and later served as the deputy secretary of the party group of the Supreme Court, the executive vice president, and the first-level justice. dismissed.
On March 21, Zhou Qiang, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and President of the Supreme Court of the Communist Party of China, presided over an enlarged meeting of the Party Leadership Group.
The meeting stated that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection conducted an investigation into Shen Deyong, which reflects the “determination” of the “CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core” to “punish corruption”, and to “take it as a mirror”, “completely eliminate the influence of Shen Deyong’s poisonousness”, and ensure that the court system “” Absolutely loyal, pure and reliable”.
As the vice president of the Supreme People’s Court of the Communist Party of China, Shen Deyong has always been regarded as Zhou Qiang’s deputy.
Xin Ziling, a scholar within the mainland system and former president of the Military Academy Press, once told The Epoch Times that Zhou Qiang was Jiang Zemin’s sidekick and was not on the same page as Xi Jinping politically. He shouted “support ‘Xi’s core’ and follow Xi”, and what he finally came up with was to oppose Xi Jinping’s new judicial policy and continue to implement Jiang Zemin’s policy of suppressing Falun Gong.
Dr. Wang Youqun, a writer for Wei Jianxing, former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China and secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, wrote in an article that Zhou Qiang is the “black sheep” of the political and legal system. If he is not eliminated, Xi Jinping’s life will not be easy.
The CCP’s political and legal system has always been a major concern for Xi Jinping. After repeatedly emphasizing the “blade inward” to eliminate Zhou Yongkang’s poison in the past few years, the authorities won the deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Security Sun Lijun in 2020. In July of that year, Chen Yixin, a close associate of Xi Jinping’s political and legal system, announced the launch of a political and legal system rectification campaign. According to official information, this major purge will be piloted from July to October 2020, and will be fully rolled out in 2021 until March 2022, before the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
On January 24 this year, Wang Xiaohong, another close associate of Xi Jinping, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Ministry of Public Security, and Executive Vice Minister, led the establishment of a special group to “clean up Sun Lijun’s drug abuse” to further strengthen the investigation in the public security, political and legal system and go to the lower levels.
In the official CCP news, Wang Xiaohong emphasized that the eradication of Sun Lijun’s political gang’s poisoning “must not be treated as a general task”, and demanded that public security organs at all levels across the country “actually investigate the people, events and cases involving (Sun Lijun’s political gang) thoroughly, and put them in place.” All existing political hidden dangers have been eliminated” and “deeply dig into the clues of the problems involved”.
The members of the so-called “Sun Lijun political gang” are currently thrown out, including Wang Like, Gong Daoan, Deng Huilin and Liu Xinyun, four deputy provincial and ministerial-level political and legal officials.
It is worth noting that among Sun Lijun’s gang members, Deng Huilin and Wang Like were both involved in a suspected case of the public security system’s assassination of Xi Jinping. Lu Media once disclosed that Luo Wenjin, the former captain of the Jiangsu Criminal Police Corps, who had close ties to Deng Huilin and Wang Like, had “planned the leaders to be inappropriate when they held a commemorative event in Nanjing.”
After Sun Lijun was “double-opened” at the end of September last year, at the beginning of October of the same year, Fu Zhenghua’s “under investigation” was announced, that is, some media commented that these two heavy news show that it will not be surprising that more senior officials will be sacked in the future.
Wu Guoguang, a professor of politics at the University of Victoria in Canada, predicted that it would not be surprising that a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China or a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee will be investigated before the 2022 National Congress.
Wu Guoguang’s analysis pointed out that since Sun Lijun was investigated in April 2020, no less than 10 senior officials at the deputy ministerial level or retired senior officials have been investigated, and they should all be related to Sun Lijun. Hardly beat Sun Lijun’s “gang” problem, the focus is probably not “downward” but “upward digging”.
Wu Guoguang said that this wave of purges in April 2020 should be planned for the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.