Of all the Communist Party Secretaries in Beijing, Liu Qi is the only one to have served two full terms as a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo. U.S. media revealed that Liu Qi’s career was altered by the case of a public mistress of a high-ranking official, which also nearly affected the career of then Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan.
According to the mainland portal NetEase, former Sinopec chairman Chen Tonghai was sentenced to a suspended death sentence for taking 195.73 million yuan in bribes, which led to the exposure of Chen’s mistress Li Wei. Li Wei was not only Chen Tonghai’s mistress, but also the mistress of Du Shicheng, former deputy secretary of Shandong Provincial Party Committee and secretary of Qingdao Municipal Party Committee.
During its investigation, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection discovered Li Wei’s diary, which recorded numerous high-ranking officials with whom she maintained close relationships, including more than a dozen officials at the provincial and ministerial levels, including Li Jiating, former governor of Yunnan Province, Liu Zhihua, former vice mayor of Beijing, Huang Songyou, former vice president of the Supreme Court, Wang Yi, former vice president of the China Development Bank, and Zheng Shaodong, former assistant minister of the Ministry of Public Security, in addition to Chen Tonghai and Du Shicheng.
According to public information, Li Wei had nearly 20 companies in various parts of China and overseas, involved in various industries such as tobacco, real estate, and oil, and was worth nearly $10 billion. in October 2006, Li Wei was controlled by Chinese police for allegedly evading tax payments. As Li Wei maintained close personal relationships with many high officials such as Chen Tonghai and Du Shicheng. As a result, the “Li Wei case” has been dubbed “Public Mistress Gate” by the Chinese mainland internet. In addition, many high-ranking officials who have stepped down due to corruption have had ties to her. According to WikiLeaks, the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai sent a message to the State Department in September 2007 titled “Sleeping with the Enemy” stating that Li Wei was introduced to the officials as “working for the Chinese Communist Party‘s military intelligence service. However, investigators believe she was a Taiwanese spy. However, Li Wei was not charged with espionage and was eventually not given a criminal trial and regained her freedom in February 2011.
As revealed by Radio Free Asia’s “Night Talk Zhongnanhai,” Chen Tonghai confessed that Li Wei, the public mistress of a high-ranking official, was introduced to him by then-Communist Finance Minister Jin Renqing. The top brass of the Communist Party of China was furious and decided to remove Jin Renqing from his post as Minister of Finance before further investigation. The wording used in the internal notice of the party warning against Jin Renqing was “careless in making friends”.
Before the incident, Jin Renqing was rumored within the State Council to be the next Politburo member and Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee, i.e., he was scheduled to replace Liu Qi, who had been serving as a Politburo member and Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee for five years. Wang Qishan, then mayor of Beijing, was named as a member of the Politburo and vice premier of the State Council.
The report also revealed that there was also a personnel arrangement option 2, in which Jin Renqing was promoted to be a member of the Politburo and also Vice Premier of the State Council in charge of finance and economics, while Wang Qishan was promoted to be a member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee.
As a result, Liu Qi was scheduled to become the vice chairman of the National People’s Congress of the Communist Party of China and the chairman of the National Federation of Trade Unions.
In the end, because of Jin Renqing’s accident, Liu Qi could only stay as the Secretary of Beijing Municipal Committee, becoming the only Secretary of Beijing Municipal Committee to serve two consecutive terms as a member of the Politburo.
Hong Kong‘s The Big Story revealed that Liu Qi was at odds with then Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan during his tenure as Secretary of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee. During the SARS Epidemic in 2003, Wang Qishan, who was known as the fire-fighting captain, was transferred to the post of mayor of Beijing. Liu Qi insisted that the truth about the epidemic be kept from the outside world so as not to affect the “image of the capital”, while Wang Qishan believed that covering up the epidemic would only make the situation more serious, and the more speculation there would be, the more worrying the end would be. This led to the outbreak of conflict between the two.
In order to marginalize Wang Qishan, Liu Qi sent more than 700 anonymous and pseudonymous letters to the Politburo of the Communist Party of China to report Wang Qishan. The two men completely crossed paths.
Recent Comments