Ling Jihua sentenced to life imprisonment in 2016
In 2016, Ling Jihua, former director of the CCP General Office, was sentenced to life imprisonment and is still serving his sentence.
In 2016, Ling Jihua, former director of the CCP General Office, was sentenced to life imprisonment and is still serving his sentence.
On December 22, 2014, the Standing Committee of the CCP Central Committee's Politburo announced that it had placed Ling Jihua, then head of the United Front Work Department, under investigation; nine days later, Sun Chunlan succeeded him as head of the United Front Work Department.
Following Ling Plan's departure, Li Zhanshu officially assumed office as the Director of the CCP Central Committee Office on September 1, 2012, stepping into the core power circle of the General Office in advance.
After Li Zhanshu took over as director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee in 2012, he defined the office as a "political organ," transferring and demoting in batches the cronies installed by Ling Jihua on the basis of political loyalty, and remade the General Office into an institution answerable only to Xi Jinping.
In the early morning of March 18, 2012, Ling Gu, the only son of Ling Jihua, died in a Ferrari crash near the Baofusi Bridge on Beijing's North Fourth Ring Road. Two young women in the car were severely injured, triggering high-level political maneuvering and intensive news censorship.
In the spring of 2012, the son of Ling Jihua was involved in a Ferrari crash. The cover-up and aftermath surrounding the accident quickly escalated into a political scandal, causing Ling Jihua to lose his chance to enter the Politburo before the 18th National Congress and leading to his removal from the General Office of the CCP Central Committee.