[...] Mr. Zeng [Qinghong] had instructed the inspectors responsible for enforcing party discipline to investigate activities in the political strongholds of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, where he suspected that senior party officials were allowing rampant profiteering by relatives and friends, and where the leaders owed their positions mainly to Mr. Jiang.
Those urban enclaves, whose leaders enjoy considerable autonomy, had also defied repeated efforts by Mr. Hu and Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, to rein in bank lending in overheated sectors like real estate.
Anticipating that Mr. Jiang might seek to protect his allies, Mr. Zeng first moved to mollify him by rolling out a tribute: the publication of his collected works. Party units nationwide were instructed to purchase and study the three-volume collection of speeches and essays, a financial and political windfall.
The crackdown initially focused on lower-level officials in the big cities. When investigators gathered evidence to implicate Mr. Chen [Liangyu], the Shanghai party boss, Mr. Zeng summoned him to Beijing, presented him with the pending indictment and pressed him to resign, these people said. He was said to have refused.
Faced with the prospect of a hostile purge, the first of its kind affecting a Politburo member since 1995, Mr. Zeng and Mr. Hu sent Mr. Chen’s file to Mr. Jiang, asking for his advice, a person close to Mr. Zeng’s office said.
Confronted with evidence of high-level corruption in Shanghai, Mr. Jiang approved removing Mr. Chen [read also an early post Shanghai Leader Chen Liangyu Sacked!], the people said.
Armed with that victory, Mr. Zeng has pushed to create a new standard of “political responsibility,” modeled after a code seen by him to prevail in American politics, which holds senior leaders responsible if their underlings disgrace the party, people informed about his thinking said.
That new standard could be used against Mr. Huang [Ju], a former Shanghai party boss and a Jiang loyalist, and Mr. Jia [Qingling], who supervised Beijing.
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