Zhou Yongkang

Zhou Yongkang 周永康
6th Secretary of the CPC Central Political and Legislative Committee
In office 22 October 2007 – 21 November 2012
Deputy	Wang Lequan Meng Jianzhu
General secretary	Hu Jintao
Preceded by	Luo Gan
Succeeded by	Meng Jianzhu
Member of the 17th CPC Politburo Standing Committee
In office 22 October 2007 – 15 November 2012
general secretary	Hu Jintao
Minister of Public Security of China
In office December 2002 – October 2007
Premier	Wen Jiabao
Preceded by	Jia Chunwang
Succeeded by	Meng Jianzhu
Member of the National People's Congress
Incumbent
Assumed office 5 March 1998
Constituency	Sichuan At-large (98-08) Heilongjiang At-large (08-)
Personal details
Born	December 1942 (1942-12) (age 71) Wuxi, Jiangsu, Republic of China
Nationality	Chinese
Political party	Chinese Communist Party

Zhou Yongkang (born December 1942) is a retired senior leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC). He was a member of the 17th Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), China's top decision-making body, and the head of the Central Political and Legislative Committee between 2007 and 2012. In that position, Zhou oversaw China's security apparatus and law enforcement institutions, with power stretching into courts, prosecution agencies, police forces, paramilitary forces, and intelligence organs.

Zhou rose through the ranks of the Communist Party thru his involvement in the oil and gas industry, starting as a technician on the Daqing oil field during the Cultural Revolution. He was at the helm of the China National Petroleum Corporation between 1996 and 1998, then became Minister of Land and Natural Resources until 1999, and subsequently party secretary of Sichuan, then China's most populous province. Zhou was a State Councillor from 2003 to 2008 and also a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee. He served as the Minister of Public Security from 2002 to 2007, before being promoted to the PSC.

Zhou retired at the 18th Party Congress in 2012. Zhou has been reportedly under investigation for corruption since late 2013, though no related official statements have been released about the matter.

Biography

Born in December 1942, Zhou Yongkang is a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu province. In November 1964 Zhou joined the CPC and joined geological survey work in north-east China in 1966 after the Cultural Revolution broke out.^[1] He graduated from the Survey and Exploration Department of Beijing Petroleum Institute majoring in geophysical survey and exploration. As a university graduate he holds the title Senior Engineer with a rank equivalent to that of Professor.^[2]

During the 1960s and 70s he spent most of his career in the petroleum industry. By the mid-1980s he was vice minister of the petroleum industry, and from 1996 general manager (chief executive) of the China National Petroleum Corporation, China's largest energy company.^[1][3] In 1998 he was Minister of Land and Resources and in 1999, secretary of the Communist Party of China Sichuan Provincial Committee. During his tenure as Minister of Public Security, he was a reformer of China's policing system, aiming to create a more professional police force, even going as far as to fire several hundred police officers for drinking problems.^[4] His time in Sichuan and as Public Security Minister made him noticed by the party's central authority, and in 2007 he was transferred to fill the vacancy from Luo Gan, who retired in the party's political and legislative affairs committee, and was responsible for China's courts, police, paramilitary and various domestic state security and spying agencies.^[1]

Zhou (right) listens to American Admiral Thad Allen during a 2006 trip to the United States

Several leaked U.S. diplomatic cables from Wikileaks have alleged Zhou's involvement in Beijing's cyber attack against Google,^[5] though the claim's veracity has been questioned.^[5] Other cables said it was "well-known" that Zhou Yongkang controlled the state monopoly of the oil sector.^[6]

In May 2012 the Financial Times reported that Zhou had relinquished the operational control of the party's Political and Legal Affairs Commission to Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu due to his support for former Chinese politician Bo Xilai, and had lost his right to select his successor when he retires from the Politburo Standing Committee in fall 2012.^[7] The New York Times later reported that Zhou's status remained unchanged.^[8]

In August 2013, the Chinese government opened up a corruption investigation into Zhou as part of a wider anti-graft campaign following Bo Xilai's trial.^[9] Since then, a number of his former subordinates who were then in high-ranking positions were sacked, including Li Chuncheng, a former deputy party secretary in Sichuan, and Jiang Jiemin, former head of China Petroleum. These efforts were generally seen as part of a targeted investigation into Zhou himself.^[10]

Zhou is reportedly being held in confinement without visitation rights in a heavily guarded facility on a military base near Baotou, Inner Mongolia.^[11]

Personal life

Zhou's son, Zhou Bin, born in 1972, was a prominent oil and gas executive. The younger Zhou was the primary shareholder and Chairman of a company called "Beijing Zhongxu Yangguang Energy Technology Holdings Ltd. (Chinese: 北京中旭阳光能源科技股份有限公司)". Zhou Bin has been under detention since December 2013 over allegations of illegal dealings in the Sichuan oil industry.^[12]

Zhou Yongkang is married to Jia Xiaoye (Chinese: 贾晓烨), a former reporter at CCTV-2, who is 28 years his junior. Jia is known to maintain a low profile. He was previously married to his first wife, the mother of Zhou Bin.^[13]

References

External links

• Zhou Yongkang biography and information
• Zhou Yongkang lifetime history

v t e Members of the 17th Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China General Secretary 1. Hu Jintao Other members 2. Wu Bangguo 3. Wen Jiabao 4. Jia Qinglin 5. Li Changchun 6. Xi Jinping 7. Li Keqiang 8. He Guoqiang 9. Zhou Yongkang