BEIJING in the winter of 2016 is a bit like Moscow in the winter of 1936: every day brings news of more purged officials and you never know who will be next. On February 4th four more high-ranking party members were kicked out, bringing to 67 the number known to have been investigated, expelled or sentenced this year alone. Among prominent establishment figures who have been dealt with in such ways recently are the head of the National Bureau of Statistics; a former chairman of Wuhan Iron and Steel, a large state-owned firm; and a former deputy chief of the country’s police.
Observers trying to understand the campaign’s complexities now have a bit more help, thanks to a database compiled by ChinaFile, part of the Asia Society, an American NGO. It includes everyone known to have been targeted: 1,496 of them, which is double the number of people who had been outed as suspects a year ago (thousands of others have been investigated but not identified publicly).
Only 151 people on the list are those who might be called “tigers”—a term used by President Xi Jinping to describe errant senior officials. The...Continue reading
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