The former mayor and Communist party chief of Beijing has been charged with graft and "dereliction of duty", the Beijing Municipal People's Procurator's office announced yesterday.
In the biggest corruption case in the 49-year history of communist China, Mr Chen Xitong, who was sacked from his posts in April 1955, has been under house arrest for four years and was expelled from the 20-member ruling politburo last September.
Rumours of pending charges have been rife for months but the news will cause a sensation in Beijing. It signals that the highest officials are no longer immune from the law, and that senior party members opposed to criminal charges against a former comrade have been overruled by reformers in the party leadership.
"After investigation, the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate has brought charges involving corruption and dereliction of duty to the Municipal Higher People's Court," an official said yesterday. Mr Chen was the most important party official in Beijing at the time of the pro-democracy students demonstrations in Tianan men Square in 1989. His criminal trial will serve to discredit the hard-liners, as he fully supported the imposition of martial law by then-Premier Li Peng, now the chairman of China's parliament. Just a week ago reports circulated in Beijing that President Jiang Zemin and the Prime Minister, Mr Zhu Rongji, had vowed at a party meeting to push forward with Beijing's anti-corruption drive by overhauling the judicial and law-enforcement establishments.
Mr Jiang pledged that the case of Mr Chen would be opened soon, according to the South China Morning Post, which quoted him as telling officials: "We mean what we say concerning Chen Xitong. There will be no whitewash." Similar statements have been made by Vice-President Hu Jintao, whose portfolio covers personnel and organisational matters. No trial date has been announced but it is expected to follow quickly. Mr Chen's case has been under consideration since he was purged from the party following the suicide of a protege under investigation in a $37 million embezzlement case. Mr Chen's son was jailed for 12 years in June last year for corruption and his former mistress had disappeared. The vice-mayor of Beijing, Mr Wang Baosen, shot himself in April 1995 as the scandal unfolded. Two months later, the party launched an investigation into Mr Chen's alleged links with Mr Wang's embezzlement racket. The anti-corruption drive is clearly being spearheaded by the Prime Minister, Mr Zhu Rongji, who this week urged authorities to move "with the speed of lightning" to eliminate smuggling of state commodities.
Recently a tax official in Tianjin was sentenced to life in prison for embezzling the equivalent of £55,000 and demanding bribes, and Mr Zhu Shengwen, a former vice-mayor of Harbin, was given a life sentence for taking bribes worth £30,000. Observers say that Beijing's higher echelons want to show China's determination to punish corruption through trying Mr Chen Xitong in public.