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By Benjamin Morgan
SHANGHAI: A year after a
corruption scandal claimed the scalp of Shanghai’s leader and a
wealth of other senior officials, the Chinese metropolis is back
once again, projecting economic and political power.
President Hu Jintao’s visit
this month to the city of 17 million people had observers abuzz that
Shanghai was being rehabilitated, even if its days of extraordinary
privilege over the rest of the country may be over.
China’s leading business city
built a formidable position on the back of former president Jiang
Zemin, who stacked the national leadership positions in Beijing with
his supporters who became known as the “Shanghai gang.”
The stacking continued right
until Jiang retired five years ago.
But its lofty position as a city
that called its own shots came crashing down last year when Shanghai
chief Chen Liangyu was sacked for his role in siphoning off 480
million dollar from the city’s pension fund.
Aside from a crackdown on
corruption, many observers saw the sacking of Chen, a Jiang ally, as
part of Hu’s campaign to consolidate his own power.
More than 20 other government
officials and businessmen were implicated in the scandal, and the
sight of dozens of investigators from Beijing parked in a Shanghai
hotel for months was a powerful symbol of the city’s fall from
grace.
Chen’s downfall led to the
appointment in March this year of Xi Jinping, then the party boss of
neighbouring Zhejiang, and a man widely tipped as a rising star in
China’s secretive world of Communist Party politics.
Hu’s visit for the opening of
the Special Olympics in Shanghai this month was seen as a sign that
Beijing was bringing the eastern city back into the political fold.
“The central government could
have sent other leaders (to Shanghai),” said Yang Dali, director
of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore.
“Hu’s presence in many ways
is considered to be a signal of support to Shanghai and to the
Shanghai leadership.”
Even the Communist Party
mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, extolled the city in an article
last month entitled ‘Glad To Hear the Good Tidings.’
Hu’s visit to Shanghai rang
with extra resonance because the party elite was preparing for the
Congress, the country’s most important political event during
which key leadership changes will be made.
Xi, son of party elder Xi
Zhongxun and a so-called “princeling” because of his family’s
communist lineage, is being widely tipped to win a place in the
Politburo Standing Committee—China’s most powerful political
organ.
Some are even saying he could
take over as president in 2012.
Since his arrival in Shanghai, Xi
has stressed the more balanced approach to economic development that
Hu has sought to engineer, amid worries about the gulf income
provoked by Jiang’s breakneck approach.
“Xi Jinping has done very well
in reaching out to the current administration,” Yang said.
But Yang pointed out that the
city’s re-emergence was also due to the fact that China’s
leaders know the city is too important to the nation’s economic
rise to be allowed to languish in the political doghouse.
This is highlighted by the
nation’s booming main stock market being in Shanghai.
“Shanghai remains the
nation’s most important city and, given the growing number of
companies listed on the A-share market, this is as good a time as it
can be for Shanghai,” he said.
But Li Datong, a Chinese
journalist who is outspoken on many political issues in China, said
the days of Shanghai getting special privileges were over.
“Shanghai as a particularly
special place politically, is finished. It is no longer the force in
politics that it was,” Li said.
--AFP
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