Capital crime in Zhejiang; Disorderly expansion of capital; Hong Kong spies; Lithuania

The outbreak in Beijing is slowing and it is only Delta now, according to local officials. That is really a remarkable achievement if they have been able to stamp out Omicron with just a handful of confirmed cases.

The most interesting news overnight is the language in the announcement of the expulsion from the Party and firing from his position of the former Hangzhou Party Secretary Zhou Jiangyong, who fell last August.

Zhou “colluded with some capital elements and backed the disorderly expansion of capital 与资本勾连，支持资本无序扩张”.

That is new language in a CCDI “charge sheet” and marks a deepening of the whole of government and whole of Party efforts to better regulate capital and rectify the relationship between officials and capital and private enterprises. The allegations against Zhou align with one of the key messages from last week’s 6th Plenum of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI):

Efforts will be made to investigate and deal with corruption behind disorderly expans…