Ally of China's Hu makes political comeback

BEIJING, Aug 31 (Reuters) One of Chinese President Hu Jintao's allies, who was sacked as Beijing mayor at the height of the 2003 SARS crisis, has made a political comeback in a sign of the leader's growing strength.

The appointment of Meng Xuenong, 58, as the Communist Party deputy secretary in the coal-rich province of Shanxi yesterday comes weeks before the party's 17th congress, when Hu is expected to promote his men to key posts and further consolidate power.

Meng replaces Yu Youjun, 54, state media said, without saying what Yu will do next.

Meng will eventually replace Yu as Shanxi governor after the provincial people's congress rubber-stamps his promotion, sources with ties to the leadership said.

''Meng's comeback means Hu is strong but at the same time Hu does not have a lot of people he can trust,'' one source told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

Yu would be named a cabinet minister and move to the capital, Beijing, the sources said.

Months after Hu took the top job in the Chinese Communist Party in November 2002, China was gripped by SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), a disease that swept through Guangdong province and Hong Kong before spreading globally in 2003. It infected some 8,000 people and killed around 800.

Meng was sacked as Beijing mayor and Zhang Wenkang, an ally of Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin, was dropped as health minister for covering up the outbreak. Hu ordered the government to come clean on the epidemic.

Meng was a one-time Beijing deputy secretary of the Communist Youth League, Hu's power base which is known as the Communist Party's ''helping hand and reserve army'' and boasts 71.9 million members.

After his stint as Beijing mayor, Meng was appointed deputy head of a multi-billion dollar project to divert water from China's flood-prone south to its parched north.

Shanxi was rocked recently by a massive slave labour scandal at brick kilns. Police have rescue more than 1,300 victims, including mentally handicapped people, teenagers, children and farmers.

The scandal only came to light after more than 400 parents posted an online petition and turned to reporters for help to find their missing children, many of whom were kidnapped or cheated to be sold to kilns.

Meanwhile, China has stripped former Shanghai communist party chief Chen Liangyu of his last official post -- a member of the largely rubber-stamp parliament -- after he was fired for graft last year, state media said.

Chen has now been dismissed from all his government posts and booted out of the party and is ''in detention awaiting trial''.

Three others were also thrown out of parliament, including Duan Yihe, a one-time lawmaker from the eastern province of Shandong, who was recently convicted of killing his mistress with a car bomb, Xinhua said.

REUTERS GL BST0837