Results tagged “chenliangyu”

Guangdong officials, perhaps not always known for their selflessness and incorruptibility, are in the middle of graft scandal that has brought down the province's top political adviser and (ironically) anti-corruption official.

Chen Liangyu (陈良宇), the former Mayor of Shanghai and member of China's Politburo, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being found guilty on taking bribes and abusing power. During the course of the trial in Tianjin, it was revealed that amount of money stolen of Shanghai's pension fund, $480 million USD was 10 times worse than initially believed, somewhere in the neighborhood of 33.9 billion RMB ($4.8 billion USD).

Shanghai mayor, Han Zheng (韩正) looks set to keep his job despite earlier suggestions that he would only be a seat-warmer after his predecessor Chen Liangyu (陈良宇) was exposed in a massive pension scandal and was sacked from his job. Apparently, rumours have been rife in Hong Kong media that Han would be replaced soon. Reuters (via the Straits Times) tells us more:

Beijing believes that Han is 'a good comrade' and 'can continue to do a good job in Shanghai', one of the sources paraphrased new Shanghai Party chief Yu Zhengsheng as telling a recent meeting of senior city officials.

Continue reading "Shanghai mayor Han Zheng to stay on"

No, we're not talking about "personalized networks of influence" — everyone needs those. We're talking about Guanxi, the paid SMS service that allows you to send the name of a venue and it replies with the venue's address. Yesterday, for about the 27th time[1] in the past several months, we got a message supposedly from Guanxi telling us their number had changed ... again: Due to Mii rule chng,new# of Guanxi Search is 106695882929.Pls save!...

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the month of September:

Shanghai is back in Beijing's good books. Or so an article published by the People's Daily two weeks ago indicates, claims the Associated Press. The article, titled "Glad to hear the new good tidings from Shanghai", lavished praise on Shanghai for it's recent successes. "A golden breeze refreshes Shanghai; one important, auspicious event after another" gushed the lead article. It is a sign, claims AP, that the fallout from last year's pension scandal has started to settle. As AP points out:

...such propaganda is a cue that top communist leaders have come to a consensus that the scandal was confined to a few "bad elements" and that China's biggest and richest city has Beijing's support.

Some things you were never supposed to hear about ... so keep them to yourselves please! Shhhhh.

... and we thought Xinhua's mistake of illustrating a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain was bad!

Every Shanghai official above a certain rank has been required in recent weeks to watch tearful video confessions by 11 of their comrades at the centre of a £200m corruption inquiry, Communist party members say.

Ma Lik, the head of Hong Kong's leading pro-Beijing political party who questioned whether China's Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 should be called a massacre, died Wednesday, an official said. He was 55.

Hu in new bid to tighten screws on rival faction, by Chua Chin Hon of the Straits Times:

One has died from an undisclosed illness while another is already behind bars on corruption charges. But there appears to be no let-up in Chinese President Hu Jintao's attempts to put the squeeze on members of the rival Shanghai faction, a group of senior leaders and officials allied with his predecessor Jiang Zemin.

Continue reading "Snippets: The Shanghai faction, counterfeit and corruption"

With heads still rolling from this year's tainted exports scandal and the downfall of Shanghai's ex-party-leader Chen Liangyu (he of bribe-taking and sexual-favoring-seeking fame) reaching completion, China's public enemy du jour appears to be corrupt government officials.

The suspense is finally over. Shanghai woke up to a new leader today. On Saturday, Beijing appointed Comrade Xi Jinping as the city’s new General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, replacing Mayor Han Zheng, who temporarily held that post when former Secretary Chen Liangyu was investigated last fall for misappropriating public funds. City residents cheered the decision:

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http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html">71st on a list on a list of 163 countries, ranked in ascending order based upon their perceived levels of corruption. While the government is quite publicly addressing corruption and it ain't exactly Haiti (#163), China has unfortunately earned a reputation for corruption and other forms of skulduggery and created a stereotype that is not likely to fade anytime soon.

Only five suspects who fled abroad in the past five years - including to Hong Kong and Macao -have returned to face charges in cases valued at nearly 43m yuan. Some came back voluntarily, while others were repatriated.

Beijing is holding a human rights exhibition, the first of its kind, from November 17-26. The exhibit features all kinds of human rights related materials, such as documents, white papers, multimedia and interactive stations, as well as sculptures and other artistic works.

The Telegraph, relying on reports out of Hong Kong, provides us with the latest news and gossip on the seemingly unstoppable Shanghai corruption scandal. Qiu Xiaohua, the implicated former head of China's National Bureau of Statistics who we told you about briefly last week, is said to have taken more than US$6.5 million out of Shanghai's pension fund and given it as a "gift" to his "secret mistress and their daughter." How did this generous offering come to light? It was "found recorded in a ledger kept by the head of the pension fund"! How's that for transparency?

UPDATE: "Former head of China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Qiu Xiaohua is suspected of involvement in the Shanghai social security fund fraud."

OK, so it's a bit difficult to type like Elmer Fudd, but you can always find inspiration by trying Google in Elmer Fudd language.

Alright, it was probably a marketing gimmick, a poorly conceived and ridiculously expensive one at that, though more likely Dazhong was merely taking orders from senior city officials who, in their infinite wisdom, had thought that the move would spiff up Shanghai’s image as a modern and international metropolis. But, now that Chen Liangyu is public enemy No. 1, time to can the idea! Interestingly, back in June, Hangzhou quietly took its fleet of luxury cabs off the street, Shanghaiist doesn’t want to speculate on that city’s mayor’s political future …

From AsiaNews' report we discovered that all the fun stuff happens in Shanghai while we are on vacation:

Shanghai (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Shanghai residents have seized the opportunity to take to the streets to protest against corruption after the sacking of some of the city's top Communist Party bosses. Chen Liangyu, Shanghai’s party secretary, and other officials have lost their job on charges of corruption and this has inspired city residents to air unresolved grievances

Continue reading "Demonstrations in Shanghai; corruption probe deepens"

On Saturday night, Shanghaiist was strolling along Changle Road (a long street), when we noticed a number of policemen in vehicles moving in both directions with their lights ablaze. Not that there is anything abnormal about that, but a motorcycled policeman did seem to take special interest in us, stopping for a moment to turn his head for a clear look. Perhaps it was because we had a large rucksack in tow or because he thought us strapping he-men. Whatever the reason, it reminded us that currently, somewhere lodged in a historic Shanghai hotel, 100 investigators from the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) are stationed for the ongoing graft investigation that has claimed Shanghai Municipality Mayor, Chen Liangyu, among other elite Shanghai politicos. The last time a sitting Politburo member was purged China was in 1995 with the removal Chen Xitong, the Beijing party chief and a significant rival of Jiang Zemin.

Word on the street is Thailand had a little political shakedown this past week: Something about a Prime Minister being ousted and tanks rolling in the capital city. Kids these days … Not one to be out done, and perhaps to reclaim the spotlight, Shanghai (well, actually the order came from Beijing) stirred up a political tumult of its own, sans armored vehicles and AK-47s, but equally as CNN-worthy.

Chen was also suspended from the posts of member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and member of the CPC Central Committee.