President Xi Jinping was barely known a year before he rose to power. Now, he is China’s most powerful leader since Mao and is chasing the dreams of world domination.

The Chinese president doesn’t have to fight an election. However, he still needs to run campaigns to stay in power.  It is about avoiding a leadership battle.

Xi Jinping has kicked off his campaign to stay in power. Eight months into 2020 with the world still fighting the Wuhan virus, Xi Jinping is fighting his officials. 
 
The domestic security apparatus of China has become his focus with the policemen, judges, members of the judiciary, officials who work in law enforcement. The clean-up has already begun. It was announced in July. China says it is “rectifying problems in the political and legal organs.” But, it is a clean-up operation.

The Wall Street Journal has published the specifics. At least 21 police and judicial officials are under investigation. It includes cadres who have been awarded for good performance.

The police chief of Shanghai, Gong Daoan is the most senior target so far. Now, in any other country it will be an investigation agency who will conduct the probe. However, in China, it is the Communist Party that investigates a cop charged with corruption. They have an entire wing for it. It is called the Central Committee Discipline Inspection which is China’s top anti-graft watchdog.

Gong Daoan is also one of the deputy mayors of Shanghai. He has been accused of “serious violations of party discipline and law”. It is a classification that is used perhaps for every Chinese officer charged for corruption in Xi Jinping’s purge and there are no accusations, no charge of money changing hands or favours being granted. Everything is a “violation of party law”.

Xi Jinping has been in power for seven years now. Since 2013, his anti-corruption drive has taken down one million officials. It includes party members, government officials, members of the armed forces and now security officials. No one is safe from the great purge of Xi Jinping especially when they are his rivals.

Sun Zhengcai was one of them. He was the party secretary of Chongqing which is an inland city of China. He was considered as China’s next leader.

However, two years back, he faced action. Sun Zhengcai was accused of taking almost $27 million in bribes. He has been sentenced to life in prison.

The Chinese government said Sun was corrupt. So he was punished. But Xi Jinping’s critics say the president jailed a rival but there is no way to prove it.

Xi Jinping did install one of his proteges in Sun’s place. Zhou Yongkang was another high profile name that Xi Jinping took down.

Until 2012, he was one of the nine most senior politicians in China serving as the head of China’s security services and now he has to spend his life in prison.

Zhou was put under investigation after his retirement, just a year after Xi Jinping took power. His investigation began with the familiar charge “senior disciplinary violation”.

In 2014, he was expelled from the party and arrested. Later, he was convicted of a series of corruption charges which included bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets.

The military has been one of the prime targets of the clean-up with several high profile generals being taken down. According to a report in 2018, more than 13,000 senior officers have faced investigation.

Last year, Fang Fenghui, an ex-chief of joint staff of the People’s Liberation Army was sentenced to life. He too was accused of bribery.

Fang had accompanied President Xi to his first meeting with US President Donald Trump in 2017. Now, he is in jail. After politicians, soldiers and party officials, Xi Jinping is now going after the police and the judges.