With more than a year to go before the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the predicted candidates for the top of the central government are already coming in. Jing Junhai, the current secretary of the Jilin Provincial Party Committee, who is only an alternate member of the 19th Central Committee, is expected to make the jump to the Politburo and head the Central Propaganda Department because of a “big deal” Xi Jinping has done.
In an article by Gao Xin published in Free Asia, it is said that Chen Miner, one of the eight post-60s who is currently a member of the 19th Central Political Bureau and the head of the Party Committee of all the provinces, cities and autonomous regions currently in office, is a sure bet to join the Standing Committee after the 20th CPC Congress next October. In addition to him, the other seven provincial party committee in the hands of the 60s, it is unlikely that all into the 20th Central Politburo. For example, Yin Hong, who was appointed secretary of the Gansu Provincial Party Committee just half a month ago, is a former Shanghai-based member of the current Politburo Standing Committee, Han Zheng, and is now only an alternate member of the 19th Central Committee, still too junior.
The article says that of all the post-60s provincial party committee leaders in the CPC so far, except for Yin Hong and Jing Junhai, who are only alternate members of the 19th Central Committee, the others are all members of the 19th Central Committee. But to say that in next year’s twenty big in the innings, Jing Junhai is certainly look good. The reason is that Jing Junhai has done a “big job” for Xi Jinping, the current “leader” of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to public information, Jing Junhai, who was born in December 1960, is a native of Baishui, Shaanxi Province. He is a member of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and currently secretary of the CPC Jilin Provincial Committee and chairman of the Standing Committee of the Jilin Provincial People’s Congress.
Jing Junhai, who was promoted from governor of Jilin to secretary of the provincial party committee in November last year, was only a deputy municipal cadre in Shaanxi province in 2007, when Xi Jinping joined the Standing Committee of the Central Politburo. Within a few months after Xi Jinping took over the organizational power from Zeng Qinghong as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and secretary of the Secretariat, Jing Junhai was promoted to vice governor of Shaanxi Province.
A few months before Xi Jinping took over as general secretary, Jing Junhai was placed on the Standing Committee of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee and minister of propaganda.
In late November last year, when the news was announced that Jing Junhai had been promoted from his position as governor of Jilin to secretary of the provincial party committee, an article in the official media China Youth Daily, titled “Three years and three job adjustments, the Chinese alternate Jing Junhai as secretary of the Jilin provincial party committee”, hinted to readers that this Jing Junhai was “different”.
The article says: Among the 31 provincial party secretaries in the country, Jing Junhai is the only one who was an alternate member of the 19th Central Committee (Yin Hong was only the governor of Henan province at that time.) Since 2017, Jing Junhai has been reassigned three times, serving as deputy secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, governor of Jilin province and secretary of the Jilin Provincial Party Committee.
The article also details that Jing Junhai only switched from a teaching position at a college in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, to politics in 1992, and then spent 16 years as director of the Xi’an High-tech Zone Management Committee, during which he briefly served as director of the Xi’an Municipal Planning Commission; in 2005, he became a member of the Xi’an Municipal Standing Committee, and in January 2008, at the age of less than 48, Jing Junhai became vice governor of Shaanxi province and was promoted to the vice ministerial level.
According to Gao Xin, the Standing Committee of the Xi’an Municipal Party Committee is only a deputy bureau-level cadre, while Jing Junhai was promoted from the Standing Committee of the Xi’an Municipal Party Committee to vice governor of Shaanxi Province in 2008, which is a rare situation in the last decade or so.
The article continues: In May 2012, Jing Junhai was included in the Standing Committee of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee as Minister of Propaganda, and has published several articles in the central media, belonging to the local provincial party committee standing committee that publishes articles more frequently. These articles are mostly loyal to the central government, including July 2014, Jing Junhai in the “Seeking” article “always maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee”.
In June 2015, Jing Junhai took up the post of Vice Minister of the Central Propaganda Department, and after sitting in the position of Vice Minister of the Central Propaganda Department for less than two years, he returned from the central government to the local level as Deputy Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee (full-time) in April 2017. After eight months in Beijing, at the end of December 2017, Jing Junhai was transferred to Jilin as deputy secretary of the Jilin Provincial Party Committee and became acting governor of Jilin in early January of the following year, and was elected governor at the end of January, officially promoting him to the full ministerial level.
The article in the China Youth Daily highlighted that this appointment as secretary of the Jilin provincial party committee was Jing Junhai’s third job adjustment in more than three years since 2017.
As for the reason why Jing Junhai was so highly regarded by the top echelon of the Communist Party of China for his frequent transfers and step-by-step reappointments, Dovetail, known as the overseas party media, has published two articles in a row to disclose the original reasons.
One of the reasons is: “Shaanxi is a large province in western China, although it is quite ‘special’ to Xi Jinping, whose father Xi Zhongxun started here and where Xi himself went to the countryside as a youth. But the Chinese Communist Party has its own mature rules for employing people, and excluding some of the differences among individuals, the reason why Northwest cadres are collectively powerful comes from their unique advantages”; reason number two: “After heading the propaganda department of Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee in May 2012, Jing Junhai had led the construction of the mausoleum of Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun in Shaanxi. “
The article also suggests that “there is a view that Jing Junhai’s rapid career rise benefited from his ‘Shaanxi’ label – because while he was in charge of the propaganda department of the Shaanxi provincial party committee, he single-handedly planned and promoted the construction of the current general secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping’s father’s cemetery expanded into a mausoleum …….”
During the traditional Chinese New Year in 2014, Dovetail.com published a report on a field visit by a reporter to Xi Zhongxun’s hometown in Fuping County, Shaanxi Province, focusing on his visit to the Xi Zhongxun Mausoleum, in which it was mentioned that not far from the exit of the highway into Fuping County on Provincial Road 106 stands a distinctive landmark sign with the words “Xi Zhongxun’s Hometown” written on it.
Xi Zhongxun’s mausoleum is located within the Hot Spring River Ecological Park. According to information, Xi Zhongxun Mausoleum covers a total area of about ten acres, the entire ecological park area will be about nearly four hundred acres, the project was completed in two phases. The interior of the park is well laid out, with a statue of Xi Zhongxun sitting in the northwest and facing southeast.
The report also said that visitors carry backpacks regardless of size must be stored, visitors are stored using the fingerprint entry comparison of access to the bag locker, which also guarantees the absolute safety of the items. To the surprise of many people, despite having registered their ID cards and stored their bags, they still have to be scanned by metal sensors upon entering the park. Visitors carry items, especially cell phones and other electronic products have to be taken out and put on the table so as not to affect the effectiveness of the metal sensor inspection. So much so that some people can’t help but exclaim: “This is stricter than airport security!”
After entering the park, the statue of Xi Zhongxun can be seen far away in the green hills and cypresses. According to the staff, the mausoleum is planted with side cypress, long cypress, white pine, fireball and so on. The layout of the northwest and southeast is politically symbolic and extremely feng shui-oriented, and the landscape planning and care of the ecological park shows dedication. According to the park management, the mausoleum planted a grass, where the location is very careful, “basically did not get away from the feng shui”. The cemetery has a hot spring river in the south and a bridge mountain in the north, covering an area of more than 10 acres, which are related to feng shui.
Xi Zhongxun Mausoleum. (Photo source: Internet)
According to a commentary article in the Global Reality Daily: Comparing the mausoleums of the former residences of the late leaders of the Communist Party and State, only Deng Xiaoping’s former residence in Guang’an, Sichuan, has a larger area than Xi Zhongxun. And according to netizens, Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum is only 700 meters long and 300 meters wide at its widest point, which is one-ninth the size of Xi Zhongxun’s mausoleum; while the filial tomb of Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang is only one kilometer long and 500 meters wide at its widest point, which is about a quarter of Xi’s tomb.
It is reported that the reconstruction of Xi Zhongxun’s former residence was initiated in 2005, but it was not until 2012, when Xi Jinping was preparing to take power, that the local government began a massive expansion project, which was completed by 2015. Jing Junhai planned and promoted the expansion of Xi Jinping’s father’s cemetery into a mausoleum, which not only expanded dozens of times larger than before, but also greatly upgraded its specifications and became a so-called “traditional education base of patriotism in Shaanxi Province”. Every year, the authorities organize a memorial service that is as loud as the Mao Memorial Hall in the Great Hall in Beijing.
The second phase of the expansion of Xi Zhongxun’s mausoleum was completed in mid-2015. Just after the project was completed, Jing Junhai was appointed by the Central Organization Department as vice minister of the Central Propaganda Department.
According to this article in Free Asia High-Tech, the future chief of the CCP’s internal and foreign propaganda, the new person who will emerge from the 20th National Congress next year as a member of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Secretariat, who will also serve as the Minister of Propaganda, is likely to be Jing Junhai.
Of course, according to other observers, it depends on whether there are any mistakes in the 20th CPC Congress and whether there will be a sudden fall of the regime before that.
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