Shanghai’s Party Leader, Mistrusted by Hu, Is Purged

By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
26 September 2006

BEIJING, Sept. 25 — As the storm clouds of a national anticorruption campaign loomed on the horizon last spring, Chen Liangyu, the Communist Party boss of Shanghai and one of China’s most powerful officials, summoned reporters from the main state news agency to his office for a rare interview.

Mr. Chen told the reporters that, as chief of China’s wealthy East Coast commercial center, he felt obliged above all “to carry out the orders of the party center,” a public pledge of obeisance to President Hu Jintao.

That vow of fidelity came too late to rescue Mr. Chen. As an heir of the influential Shanghai-centered political machine built by Jiang Zemin, China’s former top leader, Mr. Chen never won the trust of Mr. Hu, whose own power has grown steadily more formidable, party officials said.

On Sunday, security forces put Mr. Chen, 59, under a form of house arrest. The state news media reported Monday that he had lost his political posts, including his membership in the ruling Politburo, and that he might face criminal charges.

Such purges, common in Mao’s time, rarely occur in today’s China, which prizes political stability above all and does not generally let factional infighting spill into the public realm. Mr. Chen is the first member of the Politburo to be forced from power since 1995.

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