China busts 'shadow army', seven arrested

Chinese police claimed to have cracked down ona "shadow army" and arrested seven people who were allegedly planning an "armed rebellion" to overthrow the one-party political system headed by the ruling Communist Party.
Police have arrested the seven suspects for making explosives and planning to detonate them to cause turmoil through a "shadow army", state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.
The arrests followed after police probed "online tip offs" received in March in Guangdong Province after a person started a "shadow army" through the social-networking platforms in order to carry out sabotage activities.
Ensuing investigations identified the person as 41-year-old Xiang Fengxuan, who had been in jail for five years for theft and had "far greater political ambitions" than the laundry service he opened after his jail time, the Xinhua report said.

"Xiang claimed that he planned to overthrow the current system through armed rebellion to walk the path of a 'democratic constitution' and attempted to recruit those who agreed with his idea in various online chat groups by promising free accommodations and high positions after he became president," the report quoting police said.
This is perhaps the first time in recent years official media reported attempts to overthrow the rule of the CPC, which came to power in 1949 and became the only Communist Party in the world to remain in power for a longest duration.

The party headed by President Xi Jinping has carried out massive anti-corruption campaign in the last two years in which thousand of top, middle and lower rung officials including those in the military were punished.

According to Xinhua report, among those who recruited was Ma Ji, 65, who told Xinhua in an interview that he could have been "a blue blood descendant from the Qing Dynasty and longed for the imperial past when men had multiple wives and mistresses."
The group also handed out or sold nearly 4,000 illegal pamphlets to expand their influence under the guise of literature magazines.
Each of the seven members arrested had different "specialties", ranging from fortune-telling and explosives to law. Most of them were not satisfied with their own lives and marriages and had criminal records, the report said.

By the time of arrest, the group was already making explosives and planned to kidnap rich people and fund their activities with ransom, before eventually triggering explosions in the public, it said.