Update | Shanxi Party chief to be sidelined as anti-graft campaign sweeps province
Sidelining of Yuan Chunqing makes him the most senior leader to be tangled in anti-graft campaign sweeping resource-rich province
The party boss of Shanxi province will be sidelined and replaced by his Jilin counterpart, making him the most senior leader to be tangled in a wide-ranging anti-graft campaign in the resource-rich province.
Wang Rulin, 61, had already arrived in Shanxi to take over from Yuan Chunqing, 62, sources said. One source said Yuan would not be investigated and would instead be assigned to a less important post. The source also said that Yuan's ties with Shanxi Governor Li Xiaopeng, the son of former premier Li Peng, were strained.
Under Yuan's leadership, seven vice-provincial-level party cadres in Shanxi have been taken away for investigation in the past few months, including Ling Zhengce, the brother of Ling Jihua, a one-time aide to former president Hu Jintao. Yuan was also once a subordinate of Hu at the Communist Youth League.
The latest casualties were Bai Yun, a member of the Shanxi party leadership's standing committee and director of its United Front Work Department, and Shanxi vice-governor Ren Runhou, whose detention was announced by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on Friday.
Party bosses in the Shanxi cities of Taiyuan and Yuncheng - and their immediate predecessors - were also taken away for investigation. And in Luliang, the two predecessors of the incumbent party boss were detained.
The extent of the clean-out has been described by mainland media as rare in modern Chinese political history. The officials were caught up in the commission's anti-corruption push into all four leading groups of the province - the provincial party committee, the provincial people's congress, the provincial government, and the provincial political consultative conference.
