China's Communist Party closes in on Zhou Yongkang

As he strolled around the campus of the China University of Petroleum last week, Zhou Yongkang hardly looked like the loser in a vicious political dogfight.

But the man sometimes described as the Dick Cheney of China is struggling to survive in a battle that has seen many of his closest associates, former underlings and even his children detained or placed under investigation by the ruling Communist Party.

Mr Zhou, 70, may still avoid formal arrest and a trial that would be seen as a blow to the party's legitimacy.

But his fall from the top of the party hierarchy, where he commanded the omnipotent domestic security apparatus until last year, has again exposed deep divisions and infighting among China's unelected leaders.

And, as details emerge of how Mr Zhou's relatives and associates grew wealthy in areas where he wielded influence, the already common perception of rampant corruption among the country's elite has been reinforced.

Mr Zhou was one of the most powerful men in the world - a member of the Communist Party's nine-man Standing Committee of the politburo, which holds decision-making power over everything in China.

Having worked his way up through the petroleum industry he served as the head of energy giant CNPC in the mid-1990s, as minister of land and resources, as Communist Party secretary of Sichuan Province, home to more than 80m people, and as minister of public security, in charge of the country's 1.6m police officers.

On joining the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007, he was named domestic security tsar, in charge of the country's pervasive spy and security agencies, as well as China's paramilitary forces, police, judges, courts and lawyers.

In that role, Mr Zhou was credited with making the uniformed police force more professional and disciplined.

But he also undermined judicial independence and oversaw a tightening of control over the internet, a massive expansion in surveillance and rampant extrajudicial repression of dissidents by the country's spy agencies.

During his tenure, spending on domestic security overtook the government's publicly disclosed national defence budget.

Mr Zhou seemed unassailable until the start of last year when his close political ally and fellow politburo member Bo Xilai was purged following revelations that his wife had murdered a British businessman with cyanide in a hotel in western China.

As Mr Bo's downfall rippled through the Party, Mr Zhou's defence of his comrade contributed to his own political demise.

Mr Zhou retained all his official titles until November last year, when he formally retired, but a purge of his people in the security apparatus began much earlier, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

In the past year and a half, 22 out of 31 province-level police chiefs in China have been transferred or removed from their posts.

Almost as soon as Mr Zhou relinquished his posts in November the authorities began to round up people with ties to him and his family.

One of the first to be detained on suspicion of corruption was Li Chuncheng, deputy Party secretary of Sichuan province and a former protege of Mr Zhou.

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Since Mr Li's detention, nearly two dozen people with connections to Mr Zhou and his family have been detained on corruption charges.

They include four senior executives from the oil company CNPC, several Sichuan officials and Jiang Jiemin, another Zhou protege who previously served as chairman of CNPC and was the minister in charge of state-owned assets until he was detained last month.

Another casualty of the purge is Guo Yongxiang, a former secretary to Mr Zhou who followed him from CNPC to the ministry of land and resources and then to Sichuan, where Mr Guo served as deputy governor until 2007.

He is also under investigation for corruption.

Nearly a dozen high-profile wealthy entrepreneurs with interests in the oil, real estate, liquor and telecom sectors have also been detained.

According to people familiar with the cases, the common tie between most of these people is their link with Zhou Yongkang and in particular his son Zhou Bin, 41.

Until the end of last year the younger Mr Zhou and his wife, Huang Wan, 42, who uses the English name Fiona, lived at Number 28, Silver Lake Villas on Rainbow Road in northeastern Beijing.

Houses in the compound sell for about Rmb35m-40m ($5.7m-$6.5m).

As the net closed in on the family's business associates late last year the couple sold their palatial villa - complete with imposing classical pillars - to a Chinese celebrity actress.

<>Fiona Huang has fled to the US with the couple's two children but Zhou Bin has returned to China and is being detained for questioning, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

Directly across the leafy cul-de-sac from the couple's old house, which is undergoing extensive renovations, sits another empty villa.

According to people familiar with the situation, the former occupants were ordered out of the compound by Zhou Bin, who threatened to have them arrested on suspicion of being mafia ringleaders after a dispute involving renovations on their house that disturbed Ms Huang's sleep.

Several people who have been involved in business or legal dealings with Zhou Bin say he often acted as if the security apparatus commanded by his father was available for his personal use.

Mr Zhou and Ms Huang met in the early 1990s while studying in Texas in the US.

Ms Huang is a US citizen and moved to the US in the late 1980s with her father, Huang Yusheng, who uses the English name Steve and is the son of a famous Chinese geologist, and mother, Zhan Minli, who uses the name Mary.

The family owns several residential properties and apartments in California, New Jersey and Texas and has established several companies in the US and in China, most of which sell equipment to the oil industry.

CNPC, the energy giant formerly controlled by Zhou Yongkang, was the biggest customer for Zhongxu Yangguang Energy and Technology, a company set up by the family in Beijing, according to people who have access to Zhongxu's corporate filings.

Zhou Bin previously served as chairman of Zhongxu's Beijing-based entity, a role currently held by his wife.

Several other companies under the Zhongxu umbrella are controlled by a Sichuan businessman called Wu Bing, 50, but Mr Wu was detained by authorities in August, according to Chinese media reports and people familiar with the matter.

Calls to Zhongxu executives and members of the Zhou and Huang families in the US and China seeking comment went unanswered. Attempts to reach detained executives and officials were unsuccessful. CNPC executives declined to comment.

Additional reporting by Anjli Raval in New York

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