2014-12-23
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Ling Jihua attends the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, Nov. 14, 2012.
AFP
China is set to probe a fourth high-ranking official as the ruling Chinese Communist Party pushes ahead with a campaign against corruption in its ranks, although there is limited scope for the purge to continue indefinitely, analysts said on Tuesday.
Ling Jihua, a senior Party official and national political adviser, is now under investigation for “suspected serious disciplinary violation,” the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a brief statement on Monday.
Ling, once a top aide of former president Hu Jintao who stepped down in November 2012, is currently vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee and head of the United Front Work Department of the party Central Committee.
The move, announced late on Monday in a statement by the CCDI, drew a flurry of appreciative comments on China’s closely censored social media platforms.
“Great job! Didn’t think they’d get another tiger in the bag,” Tencent Weibo user @pinganjiankang tweeted at the news, while @shentanjiangjun wrote: “I support Xi Jinping…you are great!”
Factional politics
But commentators said the anti-corruption campaign has more to do with factional politics at the heart of the ruling party than with a genuine bid to clean up rampant official corruption, which is endemic at every level of China’s government.
According to online writer and political commentator Liu Yiming, Ling was closely associated with jailed former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai, who was jailed for life for corruption and abuse of power in September 2013.
A month earlier, Bo’s wife Gu Kailai was handed a suspended death sentence for the murder of a British businessman in the biggest political scandal to rock the party in decades.
“Everyone knows that Ling Jihua was very close to Bo Xilai, and the fact that Ling was able to rise to such high office was largely down to Bo Xilai and his family,” Liu said.
“So in this respect he is kind of anathema to Xi Jinping.”
