Bob Mackin
The latest target of Xi Jinping’s purge is a government official who played a key role in advancing the Chinese Communist Party’s interests in British Columbia.
On April 3, Ma Xingrui became the third Politburo member since 2022 to come under Central Commission for Discipline Inspection suspicion for corruption.
In April 2015, Ma Xingrui meeting with B.C. Deputy Premier Rich Coleman (BC Gov/Flickr)
In 2021, the 66-year-old Ma was appointed party secretary for Xinjiang, the northwestern region where the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rightsfound widespread human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims.
Ma was removed from that job last July and slated to be reassigned.
The rocket scientist rose through party ranks, becoming director of the China National Space Administration in 2013 and chief commander of the Chang’e 3 unmanned mission to explore the Moon.
Ma was also director of the China Atomic Energy Authority and director of the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
Meetings with B.C. officials
In April 2015, as the CCP’s deputy secretary for Guangdong, Ma visited B.C. Deputy Premier Rich Coleman at the Parliament Buildings in Victoria, to mark the 20th anniversary of Guangdong-B.C. sister province relations.
A year later, Politburo member and Guangdong party secretary Hu Chunhua came to Vancouver and signed a memorandum of understanding with then-Premier Christy Clark in support of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative.
John Horgan became premier in July 2017 after his NDP, with Green Party help, toppled Clark’s BC Liberal minority government on a confidence vote. Horgan’s first offshore trip in January 2018 included China, where he met with Ma, then the Governor of Guangdong.
In June 2018, China sent a 24-person entourage led by Politburo member Wang Chen, to discuss trade, tourism, education and climate change with Horgan. The meeting was two weeks after the Vancouver Convention Centre staged the 9th Conference of the World Guangdong Community Federation.
Is Ma corrupt?
No details of the charges against Ma have been released. He was last seen at October’s fourth plenum of the CCP Central Committee. It is the biggest move since January’s investigation of top general Zhang Youxia.
A Winnipeg human rights lawyer said in a 2015 interview that Xi’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign is really a “political pawn game” to benefit Xi himself.
“The Communist Party controls the country, it does it behind closed doors. The issue of choice around which the power struggle revolves is corruption,” said David Matas. “There is no system of law, there are courts and there is legislation, but the party controls the courts and the legislature, and the courts don’t control the party. There is no way, other than this power struggle, of dealing with corruption issues.”
Matas represented Lai Changxing, the businessman who fled to Canada in 1999, but was extradited to China in 2011 and jailed for bribery and smuggling.
Coincidentally
The investigation of Ma was announced as Liberal Minister of Finance Francois-Philippe Champagne ended a trade mission to China with Canadian government and business officials. The latest move since January when Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Beijing and declared a “strategic partnership” with China in reaction to Donald Trump’s trade war.
It was also two days after Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and three Americans blasted into space on NASA’s Artemis II mission to circle the Moon. China is eyeing a manned lunar landing in 2030.
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