Shanghai premier dismissed as Hu Jintao consolidates power

Shanghai’s top leader was today dismissed for alleged corruption, the highest level official to be axed in more than a decade as President Hu Jintao moves to consolidate his power.

Chen Liangyu, the financial centre’s Communist Party secretary, was also kicked off the party’s powerful Politburo and is under investigation by its anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

As a senior member of the party’s so-called “Shanghai faction,” 59-year-old Chen is viewed as a political rival to Hu, who has been expanding an anti-corruption crackdown in the run-up to a key party congress in 2007.