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China's most feared man humiliated in public before his purge
As speculation over the downfall of China's former security tsar reaches fever pitch, curious visitors flock to a mansion in his ancestral village hoping for a rare peek inside the life of a top Communist leader
He was the son of an eel fisherman who rose from rural poverty to become one of the most powerful men on Earth: a Chinese spy master, oil boss and police chief who controlled a domestic security budget of tens of billions of pounds.
But Zhou Yongkang, a 71-year-old sometimes referred to as China's Dick Cheney, now faces political annihilation with Xi Jinping, the president, poised to purge him from the Communist Party.
As the country awaits the official pronouncement, Mr Zhou has suffered the first of what is likely to be a tsunami of humiliations after the address of his ancestral home was exposed by the media and gleeful foes began flocking there to take "selfies" outside a family mansion they might once have been detained for simply daring to look at for too long.
"He is a big fish. The biggest fish!" one such visitor said after posing for dozens of photographs outside the rural property. "Normal people don't like him."
He moved higher up the ranks, taking charge of China's entire domestic security apparatus, including police, intelligence services and courts.
Between 2007 and 2012, he sat on the Politburo Standing Committee – making him one of China's nine most influential men. But with Xi Jinping's anti-corruption investigators apparently now closing in, that power base appears to have been obliterated.
Dozens of Mr Zhou's associates and relatives have been taken into custody in recent months, among them Zhou Bin, his son, Zhou Yuanqing, his brother, and Zhou Lingying, his sister-in-law.
"They are going to pull him down soon," predicted Andrew Wedeman, a political scientist and author of Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China. "He is a huge scalp."
The precise nature of the charges against Mr Zhou remain a mystery but speculation over his fate reached fever pitch this week when Chinese media took the extraordinary step of broadcasting drone images of an elegant white building in Jiangsu province's Xiqiantou village that it hinted was Zhou Yongkang's ancestral home.
The gilded private lives of communist leaders are strictly off limits to the domestic press and the aerial footage was "a sign that the end is nigh", said Jon Sullivan, the deputy director the University of Nottingham's China Policy Unit.
"It is like a boa constrictor slowly but inexorably applying greater pressure," Dr Sullivan said of Beijing's slow-burn media campaign against Mr Zhou. "By the time the coup de grace comes, everyone will have no doubt whatsoever that he is guilty."
Since finding itself at the centre of what many describe as China's greatest political intrigue in decades, Xiqiantou, where Mr Zhou was born in 1942, has become a point of pilgrimage for an unusual species of Chinese tourist.
"We came from Suzhou because he is a famous political man," beamed one visitor, a visibly excited 40-year-old. He refused to give his name, but was happy to share his views on Mr Zhou, a widely loathed figure famed for the permanent and menacing scowl etched on to his face.
The visitor was among more than a dozen incredulous people gathered outside the property hoping to gain the unlikeliest of windows into the life of a man who was once able to peer inside their homes at will.
Before Mr Zhou's political collapse, attempting to photograph the luxurious family residence of China's most senior policeman would likely have resulted in a lengthy jail term.
Mr Zhou joined Chairman Mao's Communist Party in 1964 and rose from oilfield engineer to the head of China's largest energy company.
People stand in front of a house rumoured to belong to Zhou Yongkang, China's former security chief and oil tsar, at the village of Xiqiantou, Jiangsu Province, China (Qilai Shen)
This week, smug-looking opponents took "selfies" on smartphones and examined an elegant stone carving of the Chinese character "Fu" or "Fortune" inside the two-floor building's porch. Three security cameras and at least one of Mr Zhou's relatives looked on helplessly.
"I'm a naturally adventurous and curious kind of guy," said another visitor who asked to be named only as Mr Qin but, like others, was less coy about pushing his head through a hole in the property's front wall to examine its unkempt front lawn.
"This is something that directly affects ordinary people. We had to come and check it out, to see it with our own eyes. Lots of things have come to light. If they are indeed true he is guilty as sin."
However, villagers said the building actually belonged to Mr Zhou's youngest brother, Zhou Yuanqing, who was reportedly detained with his wife last December.
Zhou Yongkang's childhood abode was demolished three decades ago and he no longer kept a house in the village, claimed Zhou Yixing, 73, a farmer who grew up with him. Mr Zhou, who is no relation, remembered his once powerful namesake as a dedicated student and farmhand "who rarely played with us in the village".
The politician's father, Zhou Yisheng, was a fisherman who bankrolled his son's education by selling eels from a local creek, the villager said. His mother was renowned for her silkworm-raising skills. They were "good people from poor families", the farmer added. "I don't think Zhou has committed any crime. It is not possible. He is an honest and considerate person."
He said "the majority" of villagers still supported Xiqiantou's most famous son. But the outsiders who had flocked to Xiqiantou were already dancing on Mr Zhou's political grave.
At least one of Zhou Yongkang's relations still lives in the village, his nephew, Zhou Xiaohua. He slammed the gates to his home when asked to discuss what had happened to his uncle. "Go! Go! Go!" he shouted. "Get out!"
There was no answer at the white building next door and its dust-coated intercom suggested it had been empty for months.
A Chinese couplet hung from its shuttered side entrance, offering some words of comfort to Mr Zhou as he braces himself for what is likely to be his annus horribilis "Peace, fortune and prosperity," it read. "All year round."
Video: China's most feared man humiliated in public before his purge - Telegraph
*****************************************************
An interesting commentary about the Chinese Communist Party.
It is the avenue to get rich quick without fear and only get caught when you upset the powers that be.
No wonder all Chinese want to join the Chinese Communist Party.
As speculation over the downfall of China's former security tsar reaches fever pitch, curious visitors flock to a mansion in his ancestral village hoping for a rare peek inside the life of a top Communist leader
He was the son of an eel fisherman who rose from rural poverty to become one of the most powerful men on Earth: a Chinese spy master, oil boss and police chief who controlled a domestic security budget of tens of billions of pounds.
But Zhou Yongkang, a 71-year-old sometimes referred to as China's Dick Cheney, now faces political annihilation with Xi Jinping, the president, poised to purge him from the Communist Party.
As the country awaits the official pronouncement, Mr Zhou has suffered the first of what is likely to be a tsunami of humiliations after the address of his ancestral home was exposed by the media and gleeful foes began flocking there to take "selfies" outside a family mansion they might once have been detained for simply daring to look at for too long.
"He is a big fish. The biggest fish!" one such visitor said after posing for dozens of photographs outside the rural property. "Normal people don't like him."
He moved higher up the ranks, taking charge of China's entire domestic security apparatus, including police, intelligence services and courts.
Between 2007 and 2012, he sat on the Politburo Standing Committee – making him one of China's nine most influential men. But with Xi Jinping's anti-corruption investigators apparently now closing in, that power base appears to have been obliterated.
Dozens of Mr Zhou's associates and relatives have been taken into custody in recent months, among them Zhou Bin, his son, Zhou Yuanqing, his brother, and Zhou Lingying, his sister-in-law.
"They are going to pull him down soon," predicted Andrew Wedeman, a political scientist and author of Double Paradox: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption in China. "He is a huge scalp."
The precise nature of the charges against Mr Zhou remain a mystery but speculation over his fate reached fever pitch this week when Chinese media took the extraordinary step of broadcasting drone images of an elegant white building in Jiangsu province's Xiqiantou village that it hinted was Zhou Yongkang's ancestral home.
The gilded private lives of communist leaders are strictly off limits to the domestic press and the aerial footage was "a sign that the end is nigh", said Jon Sullivan, the deputy director the University of Nottingham's China Policy Unit.
"It is like a boa constrictor slowly but inexorably applying greater pressure," Dr Sullivan said of Beijing's slow-burn media campaign against Mr Zhou. "By the time the coup de grace comes, everyone will have no doubt whatsoever that he is guilty."
Since finding itself at the centre of what many describe as China's greatest political intrigue in decades, Xiqiantou, where Mr Zhou was born in 1942, has become a point of pilgrimage for an unusual species of Chinese tourist.
"We came from Suzhou because he is a famous political man," beamed one visitor, a visibly excited 40-year-old. He refused to give his name, but was happy to share his views on Mr Zhou, a widely loathed figure famed for the permanent and menacing scowl etched on to his face.
The visitor was among more than a dozen incredulous people gathered outside the property hoping to gain the unlikeliest of windows into the life of a man who was once able to peer inside their homes at will.
Before Mr Zhou's political collapse, attempting to photograph the luxurious family residence of China's most senior policeman would likely have resulted in a lengthy jail term.
Mr Zhou joined Chairman Mao's Communist Party in 1964 and rose from oilfield engineer to the head of China's largest energy company.
People stand in front of a house rumoured to belong to Zhou Yongkang, China's former security chief and oil tsar, at the village of Xiqiantou, Jiangsu Province, China (Qilai Shen)
This week, smug-looking opponents took "selfies" on smartphones and examined an elegant stone carving of the Chinese character "Fu" or "Fortune" inside the two-floor building's porch. Three security cameras and at least one of Mr Zhou's relatives looked on helplessly.
"I'm a naturally adventurous and curious kind of guy," said another visitor who asked to be named only as Mr Qin but, like others, was less coy about pushing his head through a hole in the property's front wall to examine its unkempt front lawn.
"This is something that directly affects ordinary people. We had to come and check it out, to see it with our own eyes. Lots of things have come to light. If they are indeed true he is guilty as sin."
However, villagers said the building actually belonged to Mr Zhou's youngest brother, Zhou Yuanqing, who was reportedly detained with his wife last December.
Zhou Yongkang's childhood abode was demolished three decades ago and he no longer kept a house in the village, claimed Zhou Yixing, 73, a farmer who grew up with him. Mr Zhou, who is no relation, remembered his once powerful namesake as a dedicated student and farmhand "who rarely played with us in the village".
The politician's father, Zhou Yisheng, was a fisherman who bankrolled his son's education by selling eels from a local creek, the villager said. His mother was renowned for her silkworm-raising skills. They were "good people from poor families", the farmer added. "I don't think Zhou has committed any crime. It is not possible. He is an honest and considerate person."
He said "the majority" of villagers still supported Xiqiantou's most famous son. But the outsiders who had flocked to Xiqiantou were already dancing on Mr Zhou's political grave.
At least one of Zhou Yongkang's relations still lives in the village, his nephew, Zhou Xiaohua. He slammed the gates to his home when asked to discuss what had happened to his uncle. "Go! Go! Go!" he shouted. "Get out!"
There was no answer at the white building next door and its dust-coated intercom suggested it had been empty for months.
A Chinese couplet hung from its shuttered side entrance, offering some words of comfort to Mr Zhou as he braces himself for what is likely to be his annus horribilis "Peace, fortune and prosperity," it read. "All year round."
Video: China's most feared man humiliated in public before his purge - Telegraph
*****************************************************
An interesting commentary about the Chinese Communist Party.
It is the avenue to get rich quick without fear and only get caught when you upset the powers that be.
No wonder all Chinese want to join the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese students flock to join the Communist Party
In 1989 Chinese university students faced down tanks to fight against Communist party rule. Today however the Party is so popular on campus that it is concerned that too many students are applying for membership.
Chinese students prepare a welcome symbol at the Communist Party conference last year.
Almost three million students became Communist party members last year, accounting for 40 per cent of the intake.
The transformation of university campuses has been so thorough that, instead of being hot-headed free spirits, eight out of ten students now want to join the Party, according to a survey by the ministry of Education.
The reversal is such a blow to those who still believe in the eventual collapse of one-party rule that several student leaders from the Tiananmen Square protests declined to discuss it when contacted by the Telegraph.
But one who did agree, Wu'er Kaixi, said the motives driving today's students are far from ideological.
"The only thing I can say is that it definitely is not ideology driving them [to join the Party]. There is a vacuum of ideology. Thirty years of propaganda has done a good job of killing the ideals that once flourished on campus.
"The harsh suppression of any chance of a challenge has also created a difficult environment for liberals."
Dali Yang, the head of the University of Chicago's China centre in Beijing, said students are increasingly joining in order to win better jobs. A government job is seen as a ticket to prosperity. It is often referred to as an "iron rice bowl" – effectively a job for life as you cannot be fired. But the job can also provide the opportunity to receive bribes – a practice which is so rife across China it has spurred huge government campaigns to eradicate it.
"There are seven million graduates every year," said Mr Yang. "It is getting very difficult to find a job. Not many people believe in Communism anymore, but they all want a government job".
Indeed, a recent editorial in the People's Daily lamented the "impure intent" of "several students".
"Many student members have little rigour and only a very shallow understanding of Party discipline," the newspaper said.
"I was taught when I was young that the Party represents justice and that cadres are more dedicated in their jobs," said one student member at a leading university in Beijing, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised by the Propaganda department to speak to the media.
"But other students join because they want to work for a state-owned company or to become a government official," he added.
For anyone wanting to work their way up the corporate ladder in China, party membership is a huge advantage. For a secure and potentially hugely lucrative bureaucrat's job, it is a necessity.
To weed out students who are driven by personal ambition, rather than by public spirit, new rules were brought in last month to expel any students who are merely going through the motions of membership.
Students who have joined the Party said it typically takes years to win admission.
"First you write an application to the Party branch in the department in which you are studying," said one student.
"After that, you need to write a 'thought report' every term, in which you describe your progress and your opinions about society. This goes into your personal file."
The students who are selected each term have to sit an extra class in Party history and ideology. "It is once a week for three or four months and ends in an exam. No absences are allowed," said the student.
"If you pass the exam, there is a period of six months to a year when the committee will look carefully at your behaviour, your grades, your voluntary activities, whether you help your class mates," he said. "And teachers will come to talk to you about your progress".
Following this, the local Party branch calls a vote for admission. Students who pass are accepted on a year's probation, during which they have to keep writing thought reports. Finally, at the end of the year, full membership is granted.
"It took two years for me," said a 23-year-old graduate of Nankai university in Tianjin, one of the leading bases for forthcoming Communist party leaders.
Despite large numbers joining there was a perception that being a party member put you in an elite group.
"In my class, there were 78 people and my party branch only recruited three each term," she said. "I wanted to join because it is really rare, it is a small group of people. And second because I have a deep faith in the Party."
She added that many students are now far more ardent about the Party than their professors. "Lots of teachers do not know much about the Party history they are teaching, or its meaning," she said.
Once enrolled, student members are called to special meetings, especially to discuss major events in the Chinese political calendar, or to run donation drives in the wake of disasters. "Otherwise," one student shrugged, "there is not much difference."
"Students have changed in the West too," said Joseph Cheng, a professor of politics at the City university in Hong Kong.
"Students are more practical and there is more pressure to find a job. The number of students of politics, history or philosophy is falling, everyone wants to study business! A million people apply for the civil service in China because it is secure and there are fringe benefits. And you need Party membership for that.
"What it means is the Party is now made up of better educated people, an elite. But it cannot claim to be the vanguard of the proletariat or to represent the peasants or the workers."
Additional reporting by Adam Wu
Chinese students flock to join the Communist Party - Telegraph
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