As a prelude to their former patron’s own impending trial, the incongruous court performances by Jiang Jiemin and Tao Yuchun – two of a number of intermediaries Zhou Yongkang had commissioned to run his affairs in the country’s energy sector after leaving the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in 1998 – provide the most striking of contrasts, and would have given the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) much food for thought on how best to direct the upcoming proceedings against one of their most powerful former party leaders. While Zhou can be expected to receive a heavier sentence than his minions get, the political nature of his indiscretions also mean that a more tightly choreographed trial is in order.

That it has taken this long to press formal charges on Zhou can be explained by the high political stakes entailed. Not unlike his former subordinates, however, Zhou’s verdict is likely to have been decided prior to his sentencing by the party-appointed judiciary. To be sure, Zhou’s former power bases together with the “Petroleum Gang” – the Sichuan provincial government and China’s internal security forces – have long been dismantled; it is thus more than likely that the evidences necessary to indict Zhou have been established. Regardless, trying a former member of China’s political elite will not be a straightforward affair.

… James Char is a research analyst with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He is the inaugural Wong Wai Ling Scholar in the Masters of Arts in Contemporary China (MACC) at NTU. His current research interests center on Chinese domestic politics, civil-military relations in China, and China’s diplomatic strategies in the Global South.