Mystery surrounds fate of famed China cop

Wang,also is a vice-mayor of Chongqing,was shifted out of his role as police chief last week,prompting speculation of a falling-out with the city’s powerful Communist Party secretary,Bo Xilai,who is widely believed to be seeking national office.

The police chief may have fallen out of favour because his 2008-2010 crackdown on criminal gangs strayed from standard procedures and clashed with the central government’s current campaign to strengthen the rule of law,Beijing-based political analyst Li Fan said.

Days of speculation about his situation spiked Wednesday with online reports that he sought asylum at the American consulate in the nearby southwestern city of Chengdu on Tuesday after quarelling with Bo.

Employees of businesses near the Chengdu consulate reported large numbers of police vehicles in the area Tuesday,but said the area was quiet Wednesday.

Richard Buangan,a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing,declined to discuss those reports,but said there had been “no threat to the consulate yesterday,and the US government did not request increased security around the compound.”

Buangan said there would be no comment on the reports of an asylum bid. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters he had no information on the matter.

In a sign of the sensitivity of the matter,search results for Wang and Bo were blocked on China’s hugely popular Sina Weibo microblogging service and the comments sections attached to online reports about Wang were disabled. Bo,who sits on the Communist Party’s powerful 25-member Politburo,appointed Wang in 2008 to clean up the force and take on organized crime in a campaign that drew national attention,as well as criticism that it ignored proper legal procedures.

A former commerce minister,Bo is considered a leading “princeling” in the party,a reference to the offspring of communist elders whose connections won them entry into the country’s elite. Bo garnered huge publicity for his anti-crime campaign and an accompanying drive to revive communist songs from the 1950s and 1960s,spurring talk he was seeking a promotion when the party began a change in leadership later this year.