Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily has published a commentary warning retired officials not to continue exerting power after retirement, accusing those who do of “undermining party cohesion and fighting strength,” The New York Times reported. Conspicuously absent from a subsequently published list of heroes and villains among such officials was Jiang Zemin, the now 89-year-old general secretary of the Communist Party from 1989 to 2002 who held on to his post as chairman of the Central Military Commission for two years after stepping down as party chief. The push suggests that Xi Jinping, who became party general secretary in 2012, wants to further tamp down any lingering influence of his predecessors.
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