CHINA Xi Jinping’s ‘purges’ and another high-level victim

Former Deputy Security Minister Sun Lijun was sentenced. He is accused of corruption, but above all of leading a “disloyal” faction with the Chinese president. Xi strengthens his power on the eve of the 20th Communist Party Congress. The “collective” leadership advocated by Deng Xiaoping no longer exists in China.

Beijing () – A court has sentenced the former Deputy Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun to prison “for seriously damaging the unity of the Party”. This was announced today by the official Xinhua news agency, noting that his death sentence will be suspended for two years, after which the sentence will become life imprisonment.

The verdict for Sun, 53, came on the eve of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, which is likely to give Xi Jinping an unprecedented new term in power. It is not uncommon for the Chinese regime to impose sentences in the run-up to major events, as a form of warning to critics of the leaders in power.

Officially Sun has been accused of giving and receiving bribes worth 646 million yuan (93 million euros), manipulating the stock market and possessing two firearms without a permit. However, the real accusation, fed by the official media, is to have headed a circle of political leaders “disloyal” to Xi.

The former Justice Minister Fu Zhenghua and three former police chiefs from Shanghai, Chongqing and Shanxi province would also be part of this alleged group of opponents. In recent days, all of them have received long prison sentences.

Originally these people were Xi’s allies who were used in his anti-corruption campaign against “tigers and flies.” Especially Fu, who was responsible for the investigations that landed Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar, whom Xi considered an internal enemy, in jail.

Analysts point out that Xi’s greatest skill is knowing how to shore up his own power, weakening opposing factions within the Party and eliminating potential internal competitors. Since he was appointed CCP general secretary and president of the nation in 2012, Xi has managed to concentrate power in his hands. A movement contrary to the tenets of Deng Xiaoping, the father of China’s economic opening in the 1980s and 1990s.

As sinologist Willy Lam observes in China Brief, Deng wanted to replace the “single” leadership of the Maoist matrix with the “collective” leadership of the members of the Politburo Standing Committee, as a way to prevent phenomena such as the cult of personality and the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of a “strong man”.