China’s Communist Party on Wednesday expelled a senior provincial official who served as a close aide to the powerful former security czar Zhou Yongkang, amid intensifying speculation about the fate of the once influential Politburo Standing Committee member.
Guo Yongxiang, a former official in Sichuan province where Mr. Zhou had one of his power bases, was stripped of Party membership and expelled from public office “for serious law and discipline violations”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party anti-graft authority, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.
Mr. Guo, who served as the former chairman of the Sichuan provincial of literary and art circles, had been placed under investigation last year.
The internal investigation by the party’s anti-graft body found that he had “exacted profits for others with his power, taken great amount of bribes and gifts himself or through the hands of his son,” the CCDI said. He has now been placed under criminal investigation for taking bribes.
Mr. Guo becomes the latest official with links to Mr. Zhou, the former powerful security chief, to be purged. Mr. Zhou was the Party boss in Sichuan province, where Mr. Guo served, between 1999 and 2002.
Elite inner circle Mr. Guo also worked in another of Mr. Zhou’s key power bases — in the oil industry. Mr. Zhou earlier headed the State-run China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) before rising to the Communist Party’s highest office and elite inner circle — the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee.
There, Mr. Zhou was given control of the security apparatus, including the courts and police, becoming perhaps the second most powerful serving politician in China after former President Hu Jintao.
He retired in November 2012 along with Mr. Hu following the leadership change.
In recent months, several of Mr. Zhou’s aides have been placed under investigation.
Chinese media outlets have, so far, not directly named Mr. Zhou while reporting on the series of purges of his aides. Media outlets have, however, named Mr. Zhou’s son, the businessman Zhou Bin, as being implicated in the corruption crackdown, and have detailed his links to a prominent Sichuan mining tycoon and “mafia boss” Liu Han.
If investigated, Mr. Zhou will become the highest ranked Chinese politician to be purged in decades, since the famous “Gang of Four” trial.
