BEIJING: China’s Communist Party on Friday expelled from its ranks a former contender for a top leadership post for “serious discipline violations” before a major congress due to consolidate President Xi Jinping’s power.

Politburo member Sun Zhengcai was also dismissed from public office after the Political Bureau of the party’s central committee approved an investigative report, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

In a statement issued after Friday’s meeting, the party listed his numerous misdeeds, accusing Sun of abusing his position, receiving money and gifts in return for seeking benefits for others and trading power for sex, Xinhua said.

He was also accused of nepotism, sloth and leaking confidential party information and betraying party principles.

Sun had also been under investigation by the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog.

He had already been sacked as party chief in the major southwest city of Chongqing in July, a move that was seen as having implications for the party’s twice-a-decade congress, which starts October 18.

Sun was replaced in the city by Chen Miner, a former Xi aide whose profile was elevated by the move.

“This is a warning that Xi sends to his enemies that, ‘if you do not profess allegiance to me, you may suffer the same fate as Sun Zhengcai’,” Willy Lam, politics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said.

“Sun Zhengcai’s major problem was not corruption or womanising but failure to profess full loyalty to Xi Jinping,” Lam said, noting that the investigation was concluded unusually fast compared to similar cases.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2017