A veteran political patron of the shipbuilding industry in China’s Jiangsu province is under investigation for “serious disciplinary violations”.
The authorities’ wording of the alleged violations is often used in corruption cases.
Liu Jianguo, 65, is “suspected of serious violations of the law”, according to Beijing’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the organ of the Communist Party of China that investigates infringements by party members.
Liu is “subject to disciplinary review and supervisory investigation”, according to the CCDI statement released in June that has gone unreported beyond the official announcement.
Party politics
Liu retired from his active political and party offices in 2011. His career until then included long service in a key shipbuilding region of Jiangsu province on the Yangtze River.
He started in his native Jiangyin, part of the larger Wuxi municipality on the south side of the river, in the 1990s. He later crossed the river to Jingjiang in Taizhou municipality on the north side, where he rose to serve as Jinjiang party secretary.
Before retirement, Liu also held a position in the standing committee of the Communist Party in Wuxi’s neighbour city, Changzhou.
The region is known for its string of large shipyards, including state-owned Chengxi Shipyard, privately controlled New Century Shipbuilding and subsidiary New Times Shipbuilding, Jingjiang Nanyang Shipbuilding and Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, China’s biggest privately owned shipbuilder.
As head of the government-sponsored Jiangyin Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone and in other functions, Liu was a patron and frequent guest of honour of several regional shipyards. His career was especially closely connected with Yangzijiang, which has manufacturing bases on both sides of the river.
He shares his hometown of Jiangyin with Ren Yuanlin, the former welder who founded Yangzijiang. When Liu retired, Ren asked him to be chairman of the charitable foundation bearing his name.
Ren has been honoured as one of China’s leading philanthropists for his work with the Jiangsu Yuanlin Charity Foundation, to which he and Yangzijiang have made substantial contributions, including all the dividends from the billion shares Ren holds in the Singapore-listed company. The foundation’s beneficiaries include especially medical and educational causes.
Anti-corruption purge
Yangzijiang chief executive Ren Letian, son of the founder, declined to comment on Liu’s case or on whether he continues to serve as chairman of the family charitable foundation.
Specifics of the charges against Liu have not been disclosed. The terms “serious violations of discipline” and “serious violations of the law” are generally interpreted as implying accusations of financial graft, and the CCDI has been the vehicle for President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption purge.
The CCDI, as a party organ, does not technically have the authority to prosecute crimes, but its internal investigations take precedence over criminal proceedings. Party members subjected to investigation are generally handed over to the court system after the commission has done its work.
