Former Beijing Vice Mayor Indicted—Suspected Scapegoat for "Car Crashing into Zhongnanhai" Incident

File photo: On March 10, 2024, a video went viral online showing someone driving a car into Zhongnanhai’s Xinhua Gate late at night. (Screenshot from online video)

[People News] On March 24, China’s Supreme People's Procuratorate announced on its official website that former Beijing Vice Mayor Gao Peng has been indicted for bribery and dereliction of duty. The case has been filed with the Intermediate People's Court of Lüliang, Shanxi Province.

The indictment details Gao Peng’s alleged corrupt activities over the past 20 years, starting from his tenure as assistant general manager at Beijing Investment Company in 2005. It accuses him of engaging in power-for-money transactions, illegally accepting bribes, and amassing a particularly large sum of illicit wealth. Additionally, he faces charges of dereliction of duty—a charge that has led many to associate his downfall with the "luxury car crashing into Zhongnanhai’s Xinhua Gate" incident that occurred during last year’s Two Sessions. Reports suggest that the event shocked Xi Jinping. Many believe that Gao Peng’s downfall is directly related to this incident.

According to his publicly available biography, Gao Peng was born in 1972 and spent most of his career in Beijing. Since 2011, he has held several key positions, including: Deputy District Chief of Fengtai District; Deputy Director of Beijing’s Development and Reform Commission; Mayor and Party Secretary of Shunyi District; Director of the Beijing Tianzhu Comprehensive Bonded Zone Management Committee; Beijing’s Deputy Mayor (appointed in January 2023). In March 2023, he was put in charge of city management, transportation, and emergency response, with a key responsibility: overseeing the Tiananmen Area Management Committee.

On April 21 last year, Gao Peng was officially reported to have fallen from power, making him the first deputy provincial-level official in Beijing to be dismissed since the 20th National Congress of the CCP. In May, he was removed from his position as Deputy Mayor of Beijing, and on October 22, he was "double expelled" (expelled from both the CCP and public office). At the time of his expulsion, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) accused him of "losing faith, betraying his original mission, shrinking back in the face of major risks, avoiding responsibility, and causing negative political impact." He was also charged with violating the Party’s eight-point regulations by arranging for service personnel to provide ‘nanny-style’ services for his family.

From the accusations of "avoiding responsibility" and "negative political impact," it is evident that his downfall was a political issue disguised as an economic crime. In March last year, a black luxury car crashed into Xinhua Gate at night, the main entrance of Zhongnanhai, the CCP's central leadership compound. The crash site was near Zhongnanhai’s main gate, and just about one kilometer inside is Xi Jinping’s office. When the male driver was surrounded and arrested by armed police and security personnel, he reportedly shouted, "The Communist Party are murderers!" The incident occurred during China’s "Two Sessions" political meetings, a time of heightened security. There were police patrols all around Tiananmen Square and Zhongnanhai, yet traffic police seemingly failed to notice the luxury vehicle crossing barriers and veering off course in advance. As Deputy Mayor of Beijing in charge of transportation, Gao Peng was likely blamed for the security failure, which angered the top leadership of the CCP.

A year has passed since the Zhongnanhai gate crash. The driver has disappeared, and no further details about the case have been publicly released. Analysts suspect that "the top leadership shifted the blame, and Gao Peng took the fall." Given the deep public resentment and anger toward the CCP, Gao Peng was likely a mere scapegoat, sacrificed as a political pawn. His investigation was conducted secretly, and to this day, no official figures have been released regarding how much money he allegedly embezzled or exactly how he committed "dereliction of duty."

Ironically, the morning after Gao Peng’s downfall, Beijing Party Secretary Yin Li presided over a Party Standing Committee meeting, declaring "absolute support for the Party's decision," "firm alignment with the central leadership," "zero tolerance for corruption," and "an unwavering commitment to winning the protracted anti-corruption battle." The Beijing municipal government website quickly erased Gao Peng’s biography. Once warmly greeted by his colleagues, he is now isolated behind bars, never to "sit among friends" again.

Overseas political commentators have noted that the gate-crasher during the Two Sessions likely had no connection to Gao Peng, and Gao Peng was unlikely to have been the mastermind behind the incident. However, Zhongnanhai’s surrounding security was under his jurisdiction—how could he not be held responsible? Analysts believe that a key characteristic of the CCP’s governance today is that when something goes wrong, lower-level officials do nothing, mid-level officials take the fall, and top-level leaders quickly shift the blame.

Guangxi-based scholar Wei Ping pointed out that the charge of "dereliction of duty" stems from the system itself. He explained that in the current political climate, officials across China are widely adopting a "lying flat" (inaction) approach—in many places, it is impossible to completely prevent or eliminate this behavior. Officials operate under the mentality that "doing more leads to more mistakes, while doing nothing means making no mistakes." The CCP has no solution to this systemic issue. Punishment from the top down is ineffective because, when crises arise, officials' first instinct is to protect themselves and find scapegoats. Under the CCP’s political system, the bureaucratic world operates in an absurd and grotesque manner.