Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping recently made an unexpected visit to Chongqing, one of the four centrally-administered Chinese municipalities alongside Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. He reportedly emphasized the exploration of Western China, which is seen as an alternative to the Communist regime’s confrontation with the United States.
On April 22 and 23, Xi visited Chongqing. Official media reported that during his two-half-day visit, Xi convened a conference on Western development, inspected a community and a tech enterprise, and made a string of directives to promote scientific and technological development in the city.
On “Pinnacle View,” a commentary program, current affairs commentator Chen Pokong believes Xi’s visit to Chongqing is intended to publicly announce that his strategic focus is pivoting toward Western development.
“Xi knows that it will be a fatal blow if the U.S. interrupts the Chinese bank’s SWIFT system. If the relationship between the CCP and the United States does not go well, the CCP faces being blocked by Western countries, it [the CCP] will count on the Western Chinese regions, using this huge domestic market to tide over the difficulties.”
However, Xi didn’t have a mature plan for the development of Western China, as there are 12 provinces and municipalities in the West. As per Mr. Chen, Xi only convened four provincial and municipal leaders in Chongqing to make a symbolic speech.
Citing similar development campaigns in the CCP’s past practice, Mr. Chen said that historically, such construction of the western region was only an input without benefits. For example, during the Mao Zedong era, the ruling party poured the country’s financial resources, the industrial resources of Northeast China and Shanghai, and its talents into the western regions.
“This kind of extreme construction is simply a bottomless pit in which a state’s money was invested in heavy industry at the expense of agriculture and light industry, resulting in enormous economic burdens and hardships for the people.”
Fall of 3 Party Chiefs of Chongqing
Over the past decade, Xi has made three visits to Chongqing, and on each occasion, top officials in the city have been unexpectedly dismissed in the aftermath.Independent TV producer Li Jun said on “Pinnacle View” that a joke circulating among local citizens is that once Xi arrives in Chongqing, the city’s Party chief will have bad luck. “It’s somehow a political mantra.”
Mr. Li looked back to Xi’s three visits to Chongqing.
“Xi traveled to Chongqing in 2011 when Bo Xilai was its party secretary. Xi praised Bo’s ‘Singing Red Song’ campaign to promote Mao’s ideology and called on the nation to learn from Chongqing. But the following year, Bo was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for bribery, corruption, and other offenses.”
“The second time, in 2016, Xi went to Chongqing when Sun Zhengcai was in charge of the city as its party chief, and Sun was deemed the successor of the sixth generation of the Party. But not long after, in September 2017, Sun was arrested and a year later was sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption.”
“The third time is 2019. At the time, Chen Min'er was the head of the Chongqing Municipal Party committee. He was also young and had broad prospects for a political career. However, after Xi visited Chongqing, Chen was given a cold shoulder and was transferred to Tianjin.”
Guo Jun, the editor-in-chief of Hong Kong Epoch Times, said on “Pinnacle View” that the three leaders of Chongqing have a common identity: they are princelings, offspring of the party patriarchs, all potential political rivals of Xi.
For example, Mr. Bo’s fall is linked to his ambition to seize the throne. Sun Zhengcai was expected to take over the party power as a prominent member of ‘Tuanpai,’ a fraction followed ex-leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic policy that ran counter to Xi’s. Mr. Chen had once been an essential figure in Xi’s ‘New Zhijiang Army’ but was no longer trusted by Xi for unknown reasons, according to Ms. Guo.
“Now that Xi went to Chongqing for the fourth time, I think Yuan Jiajun, the incumbent party leader of Chongqing, may be very upset,” Mr. Li said, citing that in Xi’s past inspection routine in Chongqing, “whoever he [Xi] backs gets the worst.”
As for Mr. Yuan’s fate, Mr. Li estimated that under Xi’s appointment, Mr. Yuan had held key positions in the military industry, in Zhejiang province, where he has many trusted relationships with Xi, and in Chongqing, the most important municipality in the west; “Everyone could see that those are all promotions on the way to allowing Yuan to expand his political experience.”
But China’s political climate is fickle.
Since last year, a vast number of senior officials in the military system have been purged, including Wu Yansheng, former party secretary of China National Aerospace Science and Technology Group, who was revoked from membership of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the end of 2023. “Yuan was the head of the aerospace group along with Wu; it’s hard to say that Xi’s personal overhaul of the military would spill over to Yuan.”
CCP’s Sabotage of Chongqing
Delving into the abnormal political dynamics in Chongqing, Mr. Chen introduced an intriguing interpretation of Feng Shui, or traditional Chinese geomancy, which posits that energy forces can influence people and their surroundings.Mr. Chen suggested that various extreme policies imposed by several generations of the CCP have shattered Chongqing’s Feng Shui, making it a volatile place.
In the 1990s, during the reform and opening-up policy implementation, the CCP authorities claimed it needed to build skyscrapers in Chongqing to make it comparable to Manhattan in the United States.
“The city of Chongqing is situated along a steep mountainous terrain at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers; the ground easily sinks. So, the construction of high-rise buildings has been extremely destructive to the ‘Feng Shui’ of Chongqing. It’s an unprecedented geospatial wreckage,” noted Mr. Chen.
Ms. Gao believes another factor that has hurt Chongqing’s Feng Shui is the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest water conservancy hub on the Yangtze River. Approved by the CCP despite warnings from many scientists and hydrologists, the dam’s construction drowned many places in urban Chongqing.
According to Mr. Chen, after the Feng Shui of Chongqing was destroyed, no senior officials who had been there are now said to have a smooth political career. Besides the above-mentioned officials, Wang Yang, who had been the party head of Chongqing from late 2005 to late 2007, is also an unlucky one.
Mr. Wang was reformist in the party with economic and governance talents, but he stepped down as a member of the Central Committee in October 2022 and resigned as chairman of the CPPCC in March 2023, Mr. Chen said.
There have been many other accidents involving other officials in Chongqing, such as Ren Xuefeng, the deputy party chief of Chongqing, who was found on Nov. 3, 2019, after committing suicide by jumping from the Beijing West Hotel, the venue where the session was held, “which is very astonishing,” according to Ms. Guo.
