Stirring Up a Hornet's Nest.(Tian Fengshan )

Tian Fengshan never seemed like ministerial material. The eldest son of a peasant family in Heilongjiang province, he spoke with a thick rural accent that still makes him the butt of jokes among locals. Yet Tian won steady promotions, becoming provincial governor and then, four years ago, minister of Land and Resources in the central government. Even then, provincial authorities held meetings instructing cadres not to mimic his dialect. For all his lack of polish, Tian had one big advantage: he was an old acquaintance of Hu Jintao's, now China's president and party chief.

The 54-year-old minister should have been reveling in his sterling connections when the party's top apparatchiks gathered for a mid- October plenum in the Great Hall of the People. But by the second day of the meeting, Tian had disappeared. On Oct. 14, a deputy took over his ministerial duties. Since then, central authorities officially confirm, he's been investigated for "serious breaches of discipline"-- and that's all they'll say. Tian is under shuanggui, a sort of party- mandated five-star house arrest. He hasn't been legally charged, and could yet be released without trial. "But there's already evidence of corruption," says a Heilongjiang source familiar with the probe. "And if you think past cases have been complex, just wait for this one."

The minister's sacking has stirred up a hornet's nest in Heilongjiang. The allegations against him feed into a morass of intertwined investigations--some a decade old--involving just about every sort of official abuse. Cadres were bribed with mink coats and Mercedeses. Hundreds of government jobs were "sold" to unqualified candidates. One crooked official was discovered to have five mistresses, five apartments and five luxury sedans; locals call it the "555 case" after a popular brand of cigarette. After Communist Party watchdogs began sniffing around Heilongjiang, another sort of malfeasance cropped up-- officials covering up the dirt on their cronies.

If all that's true, it's a wonder Tian wasn't toppled earlier. A decade ago the provincial capital of Harbin was rocked by scandal when authorities received a tip that Zhang Tingpu, general manager of the International Trade City--a vast multilevel shopping complex--was spearheading a massive embezzlement operation. (Investigators found accounting books buried in a vegetable garden and videotapes that showed him handing out money, mink coats and mobile phones to local officials.) Ultimately, Zhang confessed to diverting $1.74 million in tax revenues to shady officials, including the tax-bureau head and Harbin's deputy mayor; 67 Harbin government employees were indicted.

It was Yu Xinhua, Zhang's own deputy general manager, who had blown the whistle on him in 1994. Yet even now, a decade later, Yu hints that the case isn't entirely closed--and that investigators may have let the biggest fish get away. Had Zhang's malfeasance been investigated more thoroughly in the 1990s, Heilongjiang sources say, Tian's alleged shady dealings might have come to light much sooner. One Harbin source familiar with the various probes claimed Tian had received a Mercedes in return for help in "facilitating" a fraudulent joint venture for one of Zhang's associates.

But Tian's disgrace was triggered by a more recent case, NEWSWEEK has learned. The breakthrough came just a few months ago, in an investigation of cadres "buying" local government jobs in Suihua, a city two hours' drive from Harbin. One suspect, Wang Shenyi, claimed he'd given $72,300 to Tian, then Heilongjiang governor, several years ago in return for Tian's help in installing Wang as mayor of Suihua, sources with access to investigation records told NEWSWEEK. "Everybody accepts this practice [of ...