High-Ranking Chinese Officials Accused of Plotting to Overthrow Xi Jinping

Chinese official Liu Shiyu, who is the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, told a panel at the Communist Party Congress in Beijing on Thursday that several high officials were caught plotting to overthrow President Xi Jinping and seize power for themselves.

“[Xi] addressed the cases of Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, Ling Jihua, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong and Sun Zhengcai. They had high positions and great power in the party, but they were hugely corrupt and plotted to usurp the party’s leadership and seize state power,” said Liu, as quoted by the South China Morning Post.

The last of the names Liu rattled off, Sun Zhengcai, was formerly a leading candidate for the Politburo Standing Committee, making him a very big fish indeed. Zhou Yongkang actually was a member of the Standing Committee at one time, making him the highest-ranking Communist Party official to be convicted of corruption.

The SCMP notes that Liu is the first senior official to directly accuse Sun of plotting a coup. He was expelled from the party and taken into custody by investigators sometime in the last two months, although the investigation that brought him down seems to have been in progress for at least a year.

“The central leadership of the party with General Secretary Xi Jinping as the core saved the party, saved the military and saved the country over the past five years … He saved socialism,” Liu declared.

The BBC notes there is some skepticism about this heroic narrative as many of the one million officials accused of “corruption” since Xi’s rise to power in 2012 have been his political opponents. Liu’s remarks were taken by the BBC as evidence that “there are intense power struggles going on behind the party’s image of unity.”

“Analysts say that while the revelation is stirring much speculation, and much remains unclear, the linking of key political figures past and present sends a clear political message that seeks to justify Xi’s increasing power and expanding national security regime,” Voice of America writes.

VOA notes that Liu provided no details of the ostensible coup plot, the actual charges filed against them are vague, and Sun seems to have been hastily patched into an anti-Xi clique that probably did not include him. Analysts suggested the coup story was meant to help Xi justify his concentration of power in the name of fighting corruption, promote his notion of corruption as a form of treason against the Chinese people, and legitimize the new supervisory agencies he intends to create.