China’s Communist Party expels top member ahead of co gress

BEIJING: China’s Communist Party on Friday expelled from its ranks a former contender for a top leadership post for "serious discipline violations" before a major congress due to consolidate President Xi Jinping’s power.

Politburo member Sun Zhengcai was also dismissed from public office after the Political Bureau of the party’s central committee approved an investigative report, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua’s brief dispatch did not provide more details on the "serious discipline violations", but Sun had been under investigation by the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog.

Sun had already been sacked as party chief in the major southwest city of Chongqing in July, a move that was seen as having implications for the party’s twice-a-decade congress, which starts October 18. Sun was replaced in the city by Chen Miner, a former Xi aide whose profile was elevated by the move.

"This is a warning that Xi sends to his enemies that, ‘if you do not profess allegiance to me, you may suffer the same fate as Sun Zhengcai’," Willy Lam, politics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.

"Sun Zhengcai’s major problem was not corruption or womanising but failure to profess full loyalty to Xi Jinping," Lam said, noting that the investigation was concluded unusually fast compared to similar cases. At the congress, Xi is expected to secure a second five-year term as party chief and cement his position as the most powerful Chinese leader in a generation. At 53, Sun was the youngest member of the 25-member Politburo.

He had once been tipped for promotion to the Politburo’s seven-member standing committee, the elite group of politicians who run the world’s second largest economy. Sun was even seen in some quarters as Xi’s potential successor.

Sun was the first serving member of the Politburo to be placed under investigation since Bo Xilai, also a former Chongqing party chief who was jailed for life in 2013 in the wake of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.

As the country’s fourth largest city and an industrial metropolis in the southwest of the country, Chongqing is a major post for ambitious politicians. Bo was rumoured to be part of a network plotting to stop Xi from assuming control of the party in 2012, and Sun was tasked with erasing Bo’s influence on the city.