Zhou Yongkang, China’s former chief of domestic security, giving a speech in 2012. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
HONG KONG — China’s former chief of domestic security, who has been under investigation for months in an anticorruption inquiry, has been expelled from the Communist Party and arrested, the official state news agency announced early Saturday.
The former security chief, Zhou Yongkang, is the highest-ranking party leader to be prosecuted since the Gang of Four, including Mao Zedong’s widow, Jiang Qing, were put on trial 34 years ago in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.
Xinhua, the official news agency, said in a terse announcement that the decision to expel Mr. Zhou, 72, had been made at a meeting on Friday of the party’s powerful Politburo. It said he also had been placed “under judicial probe,†laying the basis for a prosecution.
Mr. Zhou, who retired from the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012, amassed vast power while in office, and his family became enormously wealthy.
He has been considered the biggest target in an anticorruption campaign by President Xi Jinping since word that Mr. Zhou was under investigation was first reported in July.
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