Chen Xitong

Chen Xitong

Chen Xitong ( Chinese  陈希同 , Pinyin Chén Xītóng ; born June 10, 1930 in Anyue , Sichuan ; † June 2, 2013 in Beijing ) was Mayor of Beijing (1983–1995) and a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee (1992–1995) . He was expelled from the CCP in 1997 for corruption and was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 1998.

Political career

Chen worked in the Beijing City Council in the 1950s and 1960s. During the Cultural Revolution he worked for land reform between 1966 and 1971. He became deputy mayor in 1979 and was mayor of Beijing from 1983-1995.

He thus also held this office during the Tian'anmen massacre in 1989. He was considered a hardliner and mouthpiece in the bloody crackdown on the student protests. It was all the more surprising that he apologized in 2012 in the book "Talks with Chen" for his involvement: "Nobody would have had to die on June 4th if the incident had been properly handled." He stated that he only acted on orders from above.

In 1992 he was accepted into the Politburo. During Jiang Zemin's tenure as president (1993–2003), Chen criticized and opposed him several times in public. These political intrigues between Jiang's "Shanghai faction" and Chen's Beijing faction contributed to his political decline. In April 1995, Chen was charged with corruption and neglect of duty. In the fall of 1997, he was expelled from the CCP and in 1998 was sentenced to a total of 16 years in prison. In the same trial, his son Chen Xiaotong was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

In 2006, Chen was released from Qincheng Prison for health reasons.

Chen died of colon cancer on June 2, 2013, at the age of 82.

Web links

Chinavitae website: Biography Chen Xitong

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chen Xitong. Retrieved August 9, 2017 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} June 4 crackdown mastermind Chen Xitong dies. South China Morning Post, June 4, 2013, accessed August 9, 2017 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Ex-Mayor regrets the bloody crackdown on protests. Spiegel, May 29, 2012, accessed August 9, 2017 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Teresa Poole: Peking party boss is jailed for corruption. The Independent, August 1, 1998, accessed August 9, 2017 . 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Chen is the family name here, Xitong is the first name.