Accompanying the news that Zhou Yongkang is finally to be formally tried for a raft of crimes broadly classified as corrupt practices, there were less clear-cut hints suggesting that the vice president himself, Li Yuanchao, is also starting to be engulfed by investigators from the dreaded Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC).
On the surface, the two cases are very different. Zhou, however powerful he once was, is a retired politician. Li is active. While not on the Politburo Standing Committee, as vice president he has a certain status – this, after all, was the position previously occupied by Hu Jintao and then Xi Jinping. And while no one is claiming that Li is in line for succession as head of the Sixth Generation leaders (at 65, he is too old for that), vice president is a prominent position to try to remove someone from — and one from which the target can make a lot of noise.
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