BEIJING, March 4 (Reuters) – Two senior Chinese officials were absent on Wednesday from the ranks of China’s highest tier of power at the opening of the country’s two largest political events of the year, with top Communist Party cadres ensnared in a wave of purges.
Zhang Youxia, China’s highest-ranking general, was not among the party’s 23-member Politburo at the opening of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), according to a Reuters witness. Neither was Ma Xingrui, formerly the party’s top official in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
Thousands of delegates have arrived in Beijing this week for the annual meetings of the CPPCC and the National People’s Congress, where officials will unveil this year’s economic targets and map out key policy goals for the next five years.
Zhang, who is also a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), was put under investigation in January. Ma has not been in the public eye since late October.
Also in October, He Weidong, who was the co-vice chair of China’s military leadership body with Zhang, was expelled from the Communist Party for corruption, reducing the 24-member Politburo to 23.
The downfalls of Zhang and He have cut China’s CMC to two members – President Xi Jinping, the chairman, and newly promoted Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin.
Their downfalls point to Xi’s willingness to remove senior political figures – including sitting Politburo members – even if they create temporary uncertainty about governance.
Beijing’s intensified anti-graft drive in recent years has also touched sectors linked to the military, including aerospace. Zhou Xinmin, the former head of state-owned conglomerate Aviation Industry Corp of China, was among three lawmakers ousted from Parliament last month. No explanation was provided.
The purges of sitting Politburo members are a reminder of similar incidents over 10 years ago when Xi was first coming to power.
Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party chief who fell from grace following a major political scandal involving his wife, was jailed for life in 2013 for corruption and abuse of power.
In the years that followed, other serving Politburo members also fell from power, including Zhou Yongkang, a former security chief, and Sun Zhengcai, also a former Chongqing party chief.
DISAPPEARANCE
Ma Xingrui was removed from his position as Xinjiang party chief in July “to be appointed to another position,” according to an official announcement. It is not clear if he was ever transferred to a new role.
His most recent known public appearance was at the Communist Party Central Committee’s Fourth Plenum in late October. Since then, Ma has been absent from the state broadcaster’s footage of several key events, including a Politburo study session in November and the annual Central Economic Work Conference in December.
Before entering regional politics in southern China’s Guangdong province and later in Xinjiang, he served as the director of the China National Space Administration and was vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo, Xiuhao Chen and Ethan Wang; Editing by Tom Hogue and Thomas Derpinghaus)
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