On June 28th, Li Pengxin, former deputy secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Party Committee, was arrested. Li Pengxin was identified as a close confidant promoted by Zhao Leji, a current member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China, in Qinghai.
The Communist Party’s Supreme Procuratorate announced on the 28th that the investigation into Li Pengxin’s bribery case has been concluded, and the relevant case has been transferred for prosecution. He was arrested on suspicion of bribery.
Li Pengxin, 63 years old and a native of Shanchi, Shanxi, has worked in Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang Autonomous Region. He previously served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Qinghai Provincial Committee and Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, Secretary of the Haixi Prefectural Committee, and a member of the Standing Committee of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Committee and Minister of the Organization Department, with over 30 years of service in Qinghai.
In 2016, Li Pengxin was appointed as the deputy secretary of the Xinjiang Party Committee, concurrently serving as the Secretary of the Autonomous Region Education Work Committee and the Secretary-General of the Autonomous Region Party Committee. He ceased to hold the position of deputy secretary of the autonomous region party committee in 2021. In January 2022, the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang People’s Congress announced that Li Pengxin and others from Aksu City had been transferred out of the region. Their representative qualifications were terminated.
In December 2023, Li Pengxin fell from power and was investigated on June 17th this year. Li Pengxin was accused of cultivating personal power, engaging in the ‘Seven Wrongs,’ failing to truthfully explain issues, selling official positions, and illicitly receiving significant sums of gifts, money, and assets, exhibiting greediness and collusion between politics and business, promoting new forms of corruption, exploiting his position for personal gain in mineral development, enterprise operation, and cadre selection, and illegally accepting substantial property including shares and stock.
The ‘Seven Wrongs’ refers to Xi Jinping’s summary at the Second Plenary Session of the Fourth Central Committee of the Eighteenth Communist Party in October 2014, criticizing officials for favoritism, cliquish behavior, spreading rumors, vote-buying, seeking personal gain through corruption, arbitrary decision-making, and defying central authority.
Li Pengxin is said to have a close relationship with Zhao Leji, the current member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party.
Independent commentator Cai Shenkun stated on X platform that Li Pengxin was promoted by Zhao Leji in Qinghai and began his career when Zhao Leji served as the Secretary of the Qinghai Provincial Committee. Zhao Leji held the position of Party Secretary in Qinghai from 2003 to 2007, and Li Pengxin, at the age of 45 in 2005, became a member of the Standing Committee of the Qinghai Provincial Committee. For nearly 20 years thereafter, he moved between Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and other regions, remaining at the deputy-ministerial level.
(Was previously reported: Zhao Leji’s confidant and Xinjiang Party Committee’s deputy secretary Li Pengxin arrested)
Wang Ruiqin (Anna Wang), a mainland entrepreneur living in exile in the United States and former member of the Qinghai Provincial Political Consultative Conference, also mentioned on X platform that Li Pengxin and Luo Yulin, a former deputy ministerial-level official of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council who had been investigated earlier, are both old subordinates of Zhao Leji in Qinghai. They had deep roots in the Qinghai officialdom for over thirty years and knew each other well.
Wang Ruiqin expressed that Li Pengxin’s arrest is highly unusual, suggesting it could be perceived as part of the effort to target Zhao Leji, indicating that the purge of Zhao’s confidants is ongoing.