The Chinese state-run Global Times lamented on Wednesday that the Communist Party’s “discipline inspection” is “relatively weak” and strict oversight was needed with “urgency” – a concern raised as the world speculates over potential improprieties leading to the disappearance of Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
The Global Times reported that the Communist Party’s “Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI)” published a new set of rules for supervising powerful cadres and other officials, an attempt to standardize how various provinces and local Party units monitor and punish wayward members. “Discipline inspection” has taken a prioritized role in the Party during the last decade under genocidal dictator Xi Jinping, who regularly purges high-level officials and disappears formerly sympathetic characters into the opaque Chinese “justice” system.
Among those who have disappeared, in addition to Qin, under Xi’s rule are the former president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, and Xi’s predecessor, former President Hu Jintao, who was violently whisked out of the Communist Party Congress last October.
Xi’s predecessor, former President Hu Jintao, was violently whisked out of the Communist Party Congress on October 22, 2022, in Beijing. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Qin was last seen holding meetings on June 26. The Chinese government has offered no clarity on his whereabouts, vaguely blaming “physical” reasons for the cancellations of meetings with American officials and his absence at last week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit. The lack of information has bred a host of scandalous rumors, including suggestions that Qin maintained an extramarital relationship with a top journalist and fathered her child.
The Global Times did not mention Qin or any high-level officials by name in its coverage of the discipline inspection overhaul, but cited a social media “sexting” scandal as an example of the kind of behavior the Party is struggling to contain.
“On the basis of implementing the common requirements of the Party Central Committee for discipline inspection at all levels,” the government outlet explained, “the regulations … provide comprehensive and fundamental guidelines for the nature, leadership system, operation, duties and tasks, and work procedures of disciplinary commissions.”
The standardization of oversight rules, it continued, was “an institutional achievement” necessary because “discipline inspection and supervision system within the Party and state organs is relatively weak.”
“It is urgent to stipulate clearly the relevant operation system, work responsibilities and mechanism of the discipline inspection commissions of the Central Party and State Institutions through institutional means,” the Global Times asserted, citing a regime-friendly “expert.”
“A series of recent social incidents, including a sexting incident in a WeChat work group involving a local government department of Central China’s Hunan Province which has sparked heated discussions online, reflect the urgency of working out a system that is beneficial for the discipline inspection commissions of government departments and organs to play their roles,” the expert suggested.
Last week, about two weeks into Qin’s disappearance from the public eye, the Global Times highlighted another incident involving a former top banking official. The former vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) – an agency Xi eliminated in 2018 – began a public trial over allegations that he received nearly $70 million in bribes during his time in office.
Cai Esheng ran the commission from 2005 to 2013, the year Xi Jinping became the country’s dictator. The Global Times reported that prosecutors accused Cai of “providing assistance to relevant units and individuals in matters such as financing and loans, business contracts and job promotions between 2006 and 2021,” in exchange for the bribes. As is customary in Chinese communist law, Cai was forced to issue a humiliating “confession” for his alleged sins.
The Xinhua News Agency reported on a similar bribery case on June 28, three days after Qin’s disappearance.
“The Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) has ordered the arrest of Zhou Jiankun, former vice chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the provincial political advisory body, for suspected bribe-taking,” Xinhua, a Chinese government outlet, reported.
No evidence suggests that Qin is facing “discipline” for taking bribes. The Chinese government, neither through the Foreign Ministry nor other agencies, has not offered a tangible explanation for Qin not meeting his job commitments for nearly a month, however, outside of unexplained rumors of a health issue. Internet rumors have accused Qin not of financial impropriety, but of an extramarital affair. The Foreign Ministry allowed a journalist to ask if Qin’s disappearance was related to rumors of his affair with Phoenix TV interviewer Fu Xiaotian, but refused to comment. The question and answer did not appear in the official transcript of the press briefing where it was asked, but remained in video of the briefing.
Fu appears to be the source of much of the speculation. On March 19, she posted a bizarre message on the Chinese regime-controlled social media platform Twitter wishing an unidentified person a happy birthday (Qin’s birthday is March 19, according to Chinese government information). Her last post on Weibo and Twitter, on April 10, featured a photo of her infant son, whose father’s identity is not publicly known, and a screenshot from her interview with Qin in March 2022, which she described as her last interview.
Last time flying alone with this aircraft was from LA to DC for a work visit, and that both happily and sadly turned to be the very last interview I did with Talk with World Leaders. This time to fly out with this aircraft was also from LA, but with precious baby son Er-Kin pic.twitter.com/C8izukrkzj
— Fu Xiaotian 傅曉田 (@xiaotianphoenix) April 10, 2023
Many experts have publicly dismissed the alleged affair as the reason for Qin’s disappearance, as infidelity and sexual impropriety are pervasive in the upper levels of Chinese leadership.
“If Qin Gang has no political trouble, it [the affair] will not matter since many high-rank [Communist Party] officials have those,” legal scholar and Chinese dissident Yuan Hongbing told the Epoch Times this week. “But if Qin Gang is in political trouble, that is, if he has connections with high-ranking military officials who have been recently taken down, Xi Jinping won’t tolerate it. The affair then will be used as one of the pieces of evidence against him.”
The exceptions of cases in which the Communist Party’s “discipline” officials have punished affairs are those in which the individuals in question are accused of other crimes, such as bribery or insufficient loyalty to Xi, or when they engage in their affairs publicly. Last month, for example, a top official at the state China National Petroleum Corporation lost his job and was directed to discipline inspection after social media video showed him strolling publicly, hand-in-hand, with an alleged mistress.