A few days ago, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced that Peng Bo, the former deputy director of the 610 Office of the CPC Central Committee, was under investigation, but did not list his biography as usual, and his identity information was strangely removed from the official website of the CPC. Overseas media found that Peng Bo had multiple hidden identities and had long held key positions in the Chinese propaganda system controlled by Liu Yunshan.
On March 13, local Time, the official website of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) issued an announcement that Peng Bo, former deputy director of the 610 Office of the CPC Central Committee, was “suspected of serious disciplinary violations” and was currently under review and supervisory investigation by the CCDI State Supervision Commission. The outside world noticed that the notice only has a short sentence and does not list Peng Bo’s work history as usual. This anomaly has raised questions from the outside world.
Overseas Chinese media Mingde.com found that the entry of Peng Bo on Baidu’s encyclopedia shows that Peng Bo was born in March 1957, a native of Nan County, Hunan Province, and worked in the news media in his early years as a member of the party group and vice president of the China Youth Publishing (General) Agency and chief editor of the Central Network Film and Television Center of the Communist Youth League.
In May 2006, Peng was transferred to the Foreign Propaganda Office of the CPC Central Committee, where he served as deputy director of the Fifth Bureau, director of the Ninth Bureau, and director of the Tenth Bureau. from September 2012 to August 2015, Peng was also transferred to the Office of the Central Committee of the CPC as full-time deputy director.
The content of Peng Bo’s entry on Baidu’s encyclopedia ends here, and Peng Bo’s biographical information after 2016 is vacant. However, sources on the Internet claim that from August 2015 to September 2018, Peng Bo served as the head of the Central Political and Legal Committee’s Network Public Opinion Response and Disposal Coordination Group, and also served as a member of the Central Committee’s Comprehensive Governance Committee, among other multiple roles. It was only when the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection issued an announcement about Peng Bo’s investigation that it was revealed that he also held the position of deputy director of the 610 Office of the CPC Central Committee.
(Web screenshot)
However, shortly after the announcement that Peng Bo had been investigated, the above entry in Baidu’s encyclopedia was bizarrely removed, and all information about Peng Bo’s identity on the official website of the CCP’s Internet Information Office and some other official CCP websites has now been removed as well. However, a Google search snapshot of the page retains some of the content of the information on Baidu’s encyclopedia.
Peng Bo’s biography and photos have now been quickly removed from official mainland web pages. (Web screenshot)
This perverse move by the Chinese Communist Party officials has instead aroused various suspicions in overseas Chinese opinion circles. Some public opinion has pointed out that the aforementioned information shows that Peng Bo has served in the propaganda system of the CPC for a long time since 2006, while Liu Yunshan, a former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, has been in charge of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee for a long time since 1993. In other words, Peng Bo has been serving under Liu Yunshan for at least 10 years, so he is probably Liu Yunshan’s man.
Publicly available information shows that Liu Yunshan was transferred to the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee in 1993 as vice minister; from 1997, Liu also served as director of the Office of the Steering Committee for the Construction of Spiritual Civilization of the CPC Central Committee; and for 10 years from 2002 to 2012, Liu Yunshan served as minister of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee.
On November 15, 2012, Liu Yunshan became a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee (ranked first) at the First Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, and from 2013, he was also the Director of the Steering Committee for the Construction of Spiritual Civilization of the CPC Central Committee and the President of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, responsible for leading the ideological work of the CPC until 2017.
External analysis suggests that Peng Bo was still under Liu Yunshan’s leadership at the time if the news that he had served as the head of the Public Opinion Handling Group of the CPC Central Committee’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission from August 2015 onwards is true.
In addition, historical document scholar Wu Renhua disclosed on Twitter on March 14 that Peng Bo also had a secret identity – a member of the Ministry of State Security.
Wu Renhua’s tweet revealed that Peng Bo was a 1977 student of journalism in the Chinese Department of Peking University, with whom he had been a dormitory roommate. When Peng Bo graduated from college in the spring of 1982, he was selected by the Ministry of State Security of the Communist Party of China (the Ministry of State Security was not formally established at the time; the author may refer to its predecessor) and received two years of “professional training” at the Ministry of State Security.
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