Ying Yong (left) succeeded Jiang Chaoliang (right) as secretary of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee in February last year.
In recent times, there has been an increasingly intense transfer of personnel in various local official circles to prepare for the 20th Communist Party Congress at the end of next year. In Hubei province, which was first hit by the virus last year, the epidemic has become a “political achievement” for the promotion of officials.
Hubei province was the source and hardest hit by the pandemic last year. Key officials in Hubei and Wuhan have been the focus of criticism from the public because of questions about underreporting and late reporting. Chinese netizens have sarcastically dubbed four of these key officials the “Hubei F4. They are Jiang Chaoliang, secretary of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee; Wang Xiaodong, governor of Hubei Province; Ma Guoqiang, secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Committee; and Zhou Xianwang, mayor of Wuhan.
Among the four, Jiang Chaoliang and Ma Guoqiang were transferred out at the same time in February 2020 and were replaced by Ying Yong, then mayor of Shanghai, and Wang Zhonglin, secretary of the Jinan Municipal Committee in Shandong Province, respectively. Zhou Xianwang was transferred to the CPPCC in Hubei in January this year, and his position was taken over by Cheng Yongwen, director of the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission. Hubei Governor Wang Xiaodong, on the other hand, continues to perform his duties, but is thought to be transferred soon.
There have long been comments on Weibo saying, “When will the F4 all step down?” “They have caused incalculable damage and deserve to have such a downfall.”
The “Hubei F4”, who originally held real power in Hubei and the provincial capital Wuhan, were beaten to death by Xi Jinping’s central government on the grounds that they were responsible for the out-of-control epidemic, according to an article written by commentator Zheng Zhongyuan in the Taiwanese newspaper Shangpao. The unspoken rule of the Chinese Communist Party system is that these four people are destined to be thrown out, but because Xi Jinping himself is actually responsible, and because they may have their own backers in the official circles, Xi Jinping has gone to great lengths to deal with these four people.
Zheng Zhongyuan also said that under the state system, from hospitals, local health departments, disease control departments, central and State Council-level departments, all the way to the top of the Communist Party, all conspired to hide the epidemic, which is why the epidemic spread around the world. Xi Jinping, in particular, is full of extreme stability maintenance thinking, which could make things worse due to his own sense of protecting the party.
Official information so far shows that the four have not really been punished for concealing the epidemic, and that Hubei’s officialdom as a whole is on the rise ahead of the 20th Communist Party Congress.
The Beijing-based “Dovetail” on April 18 took a special look at Wang Lishan, who was a member of the Standing Committee of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee and secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission, and was found to have gone to Beijing to take up his post – Ji Bingxuan, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) National People’s Congress (NPC), led a research team to Jiangxi from April 10 to 14, and Wang Lishan, as head of the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in the NPC and a member of the CPC NPC Standing Committee organs as a member of the party group to participate.
Wang Lishan, born in 1961, has long been involved in official circles in Hebei province, and was appointed to the Standing Committee of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee and Secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission in March 2017, and has joined the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection at the age of 60 after experiencing the entire epidemic, apparently unaffected by the CPC virus outbreak.
In addition, the report cites rumors that Wang Zhonglin, the so-called “fire-fighting chief” who replaced Ma Guoqiang during the epidemic last February, is suspected to be coming to Beijing to take up the post of China’s emergency management minister. Wang Zhonglin was born in 1962. The current emergency management minister, Huang Ming, was born in 1957, exactly five years older than Wang Zhonglin.
Ying Yong, the other current Hubei provincial party secretary who went to Hubei as a “fire-fighting chief,” has been seen as a favorite to join the Politburo at the 20th National Congress because he is a former member of Xi Jinping’s party.
Ying Yong is now 64 years old, nearing the retirement age of 65 as a ministerial-level official. Compared with other local officials who will also reach the age of 65, such as Peng Qinghua, secretary of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Party Committee, Ruan Chengfa, secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee, and Chen Run’er, secretary of the Ningxia Regional Party Committee, Ying Yong is the one most likely to move up the ladder in the next two years.
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