China has jailed a former senior journalist from the state news agency Xinhua and canceled his pension and medical coverage after he asked questions about the politically sensitive death of Premier Li Keqiang.
Li died of a heart attack in Shanghai on Oct. 27, 2023, at the age of 68, shocking many in a country where members of the elite typically live into their 80s, prompting suspicions and rumors around his death.
Three days later, Gu Wanming, a former Xinhua bureau chief in the southern province of Guangdong, published an open letter calling for a full investigation into the cause of the Li’s death.
Xinhua is a state organization with full civil service privileges, and an integral part of the ruling Communist Party’s official information and propaganda system. Its copy is regarded as a cast-iron representation of the party line, and the government’s final word on any factual matter.
Using his status as a Communist Party member, Gu called for the cremation of Li’s remains to be halted pending an investigation, as well as an autopsy to clarify the cause of death.
Gu also took issue with the reason for Li’s arrival at the Pudong Dongjiao Hotel, where he was staying at the time of his death, calling for clarity about the circumstances surrounding his sudden death.
But soon after that he was arrested and handed a one-year jail term by a Shanghai court last November for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”
End of an era
Mourners carpeted public spaces in cities with floral tributes, amid ongoing public dissatisfaction over Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s handling of the economy.
Li was buried with due honors, but at a low-key funeral ceremony that seemed designed to prevent any public outpourings of grief that might trigger protests, as they once did for former premier Hu Yaobang in 1989.
His death was widely regarded as a symbol of the end of an era of relative openness and economic growth in China, meaning that concern for Li’s passing could be viewed as disloyalty by Xi.
Cutting retirement benefits
Xinhua’s personnel department notified Gu on Dec. 10, 2024, that it would cancel his retirement benefits, according to a leaked internal document published by the rights website Weiquanwang this week.
The move will be a huge blow for someone who reached the rank Gu did, commentators said.
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“He should have gotten medical treatment at a level just below ministerial, because he ranked as a full department head,” political commentator Cai Shenkun told RFA’s Mandarin Service in a recent interview.
“I have met him before,” Cai said. “He is a very gentle person. Even when things would go wrong in the news business, he was always a very stable person.”
Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School now living in the United States, said via her X account that she admired Gu’s courage in asking tough questions.
A retired Xinhua reporter who gave only the surname Zhang for fear of reprisals said Gu had violated party regulations by making “rash comments about the central government.”
“They don’t say you’re a counterrevolutionary any more -- they say you’re stirring up trouble,” he said of the charge against Gu. “He was a Xinhua bureau chief, yet he has lost all his benefits.”
“They won’t even make sure he gets enough to eat in his later years,” Zhang said. “They do this to make sure you lose any integrity, especially anyone working in the [government] system.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.