Chen Gang, vice-mayor of Beijing from 2006 to 2017, has been detained on suspicion of corruption. Photo: Boao Forum</s>A former vice-mayor of Beijing has been detained as part of an investigation into alleged corruption and amid reports he may have had links to fugitive tycoon Guo Wengui.

Chen Gang, who was head of urban development in the Chinese capital for more than a decade, was taken into custody on suspicion of “serious violations” of party discipline and state law, the National Supervisory Commission said on Sunday, making him the first high-profile official of 2019 to be accused of the standard euphemism for corruption.

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The statement did not elaborate, but Chinese news outlet Caixin reported on Monday that Chen, 52, had used his authority to help Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, to obtain loans and gain government approval for property developments in Beijing.

Guo now lives in New York, but is wanted in China in connection with a string of alleged crimes including corruption and rape.

Chen was once considered a rising star in Chinese politics and in 2006 was appointed vice-mayor of Beijing with responsibility for urban planning ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games.

In 2012 at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party he was made an alternate member of the Central Committee – the largest of China’s elite decision-making bodies with more than 370 full and alternate members – only to lose the position at the party congress five years later.

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He also lost his post as vice-mayor at the 2017 congress and was reassigned to the South-North Water Diversion Project, before moving on again last year to head the China Association for Science and Technology.

According to the Caixin report, Chen’s links to Guo date back to 2008 when he gave the green light to plans for the development of an office building that was larger than had been approved.

The two men had a mutual associate in Ma Jian, then state security minister, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on corruption charges last month.

In a videotaped confession Ma said he approached Chen in 2008 to help secure approval for Guo’s project.

Guo, 51, left mainland China in 2013 and is known as a fierce critic of Beijing having made a series of corruption allegations against several senior Chinese officials.</s>The last time Chicago Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Robert Chen played his hometown – Taipei, Taiwan – the stakes were rather high.

Music director Riccardo Muti abruptly had bowed out of the orchestra’s 2013 Asia tour due to emergency hernia surgery. That meant the CSO had lost a marquee attraction and needed to rethink the expedition at the 11th hour.

So CSO management hit on an ingenious idea: Ask Chen to step up as violin soloist in the city where he was born and spent the first 10 years of his life. The question was whether he would – and whether he could.

The episode plays on Chen’s mind as he prepares to return to Taipei, where the CSO will launch its forthcoming Asia tour on Jan. 19.

“There was some last-minute scrambling to get other people to come and play the concerts, and they had to change the program,” recalls Chen of a “stressful” turn of events for musicians and administrators.

Martha Gilmer, then a CSO executive, made the pitch to Chen.

“Obviously, when Muti cancelled, there was a lot of disappointment,” recalls Gilmer, currently chief executive officer of the San Diego Symphony.

“So we were looking at what would make these concerts very special. And Robert being a native son, as it were, we felt had a very special sentiment.”

“I said, ‘OK, fine, I’ll step up and do it, take one for the team. … I’ll pull it out of my library and practice little bit and give it a whirl.’”

When the big moment came, “It felt a little bit like a dream,” says Chen, 49. “It was a good response, very enthusiastic. They felt like I’m one of them,” he adds, referring to the Taiwanese audience.

“It was a connection to your own people.”

Or, as Gilmer puts it, “I can’t imagine how proud it must have been for him to stand with his orchestra at that moment. … I think it was a golden moment.”

This time around, if all goes as planned, Chen and the orchestra will play tour-opening concerts with their music director in Taipei, the second (Jan. 20) featuring Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherezade.” Muti and the orchestra played the piece majestically last September in Orchestra Hall, the extensive solo passages for violin placing Chen in a spotlight he’ll reclaim when the musicians return to Taipei.

Chen’s “first solo told the story,” I wrote in my review of the CSO performance, “the sweetness of his tone, tautness of his vibrato and sweep of his phrases avoiding sentimentality.”

As Chen and the orchestra get ready to head to Taiwan, though, stress will be coming from another source: international politics. At the start of the New Year, Chinese president Xi Jinping asserted in a speech that Taiwain’s unification with China was “a great trend of history” and warned that “we make no promise to abandon the use of force” to make it happen.

To which Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen responded defiantly a few days later: “It is impossible for me or, in my view, any responsible politician in Taiwan to accept President Xi Jingping’s recent remarks without betraying the trust and the will of the people of Taiwan,” she said in a briefing to foreign reporters.

Into the fray go Chen and the CSO, in a tour that will venture from Taiwan to China and then Japan.

“It’s crazy, the politics of it all now, but we’re cultural ambassadors in a sense,” observes Chen.

“We’re not there to discuss whether Xi is right or whether Trump is right,” he adds, referencing the ongoing trade battle between the two powers. “It’s silly. It’s like watching a fight on a playground a little bit: It always starts with something that is seemingly inconsequential.”

If any force can ameliorate struggles among nations, it’s music, especially when delivered at the level the CSO long has epitomized.

For Chen, the return to Taiwan will be personal, too, evoking memories of a picturesque childhood on the other side of the world.

“Life was pretty idyllic,” he says of his youth in Taipei. “We had a nice little house in the hills and two dogs, a little goldfish pond, some fruit trees in the backyard. … I remember enjoying being in school. It was fun, and there was a rice paddy that was right adjacent to the school. We would go in there and hunt for frogs and bugs and things of that nature.”

Chen began keyboard proficiency classes at age 6, and when he was 7, “I came home, and a violin was waiting for me,” he says. “Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my sisters played piano, and there was one piano in the house, so they figured it might be easier to divvy up the practice time” if someone played fiddle.

Like most youngsters, Chen “much preferred going outside – I wanted to go to the swimming pool or play ball in the field or hang out in the neighborhood with the kids,” he says. “Practicing was not so high up on the totem pole.”

Still, he believes he learned a lot from a “very strict” violin teacher in Taipei, and when the family moved to Los Angeles in 1979, when Chen was 10, he continued his studies, working with violinist Robert Lipsett and taking part in Jascha Heifetz’s master classes. Chen went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki.

“He’s an excellent violinist,” says violinist Samuel Magad, who shared the concertmaster post with Chen beginning in 1999.

Magad retired from the orchestra in 2007, after a 48-year run, and since then, “I’ve heard him, and he sounds beautiful. It’s really a pleasure to hear him. I know he continues in the tradition of the Chicago Symphony, which is all we try to do.”

Married to violinist Laura Park Chen and father of two teenagers now studying music on the East Coast, Robert Chen has a particular goal for the upcoming tour.

“Whenever you go on tour to a place that’s not home, one’s desire is always to bring something to the public, to express something that touches them in a specific way,” says Chen.

“And it’s something that they will take away from that experience. It’s about giving. The more you give, the more you get in return. That’s how it should be for a musician. So that’s what I’m hoping to get from this trip.”

During two Tokyo concerts, the CSO will perform Verdi’s Requiem Mass, a Muti specialty.

“It’s a work that he’s very fond of – it’s his daily bread, almost,” says Chen.

“It will be a great honor to go to Asia again with maestro Muti. I’m not sure if we will do it again. Given his tenure will finish in 2022, it might be the last time that we go there with this music director.</s>H.T. Chen & Dancers will appear in a program of H.T. works informed by Chinese history and culture, including excerpts from "South of Gold Mountain," their impeccably researched work that tells the little-known story of the thousands of Chinese immigrants who came to America and settled in Southern states, helping to build railroads, bridges, and more. The evening, which gives food for thought and refreshments starts at 7 PM with a serving of dim sum.
Chen Gang, the former vice-mayor of Beijing, is detained for corruption.