CHINESE President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign has implicated a record number of senior officials for two straight years, highlighting the risks for bureaucrats and threatening to unsettle investors already anxious about the economy.
Chen Xiaobo, deputy chief of the provincial graft watchdog in Hainan, is being investigated for suspected “serious violations”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said on Thursday (Oct 10).
The probe brings the total number of senior government officials targeted by Xi’s campaign since January to 46, surpassing last year’s record of 45 with more than two months left to go.
The record probes show the deepening intensity of Xi’s signature anti-corruption push, which he has used to discipline the ruling Communist Party and eliminate political rivals since taking office in 2012. China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong vowed at the start of the year to show “no mercy” in fighting corruption in critical sectors such as finance, energy, pharmaceutical and infrastructure.
In particular, China has continued to tighten its grip over the US$66 trillion finance industry, labelling bankers as “hedonistic” and creating a new financial corruption work committee, indicating a push for more permanent oversight of the sector.
For example, the CCDI in June opened a probe into Xu Zuo, a deputy general manager of the state-owned financial conglomerate Citic Group. Other financial figures probed this year include Lou Wenlong, former vice-president of Agricultural Bank of China, and Li Jiping, former vice-president of China Development Bank.
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The CCDI also investigated former agriculture minister Tang Renjian in May, making him the third minister ousted from the current cabinet, a rare pace of removals.
As the Thursday announcement showed, even CCDI staffers themselves are not exempt from the corruption fight. The probe of the provincial graft buster, Chen Xiaobo, followed that of Li Gang, head of the CCDI’s inspection team at the Communist Party’s human resources department, late last month.
Bloomberg’s tally is based on announcements from the graft watchdog CCDI. It does not include two ex-defence ministers of China removed by the Politburo. The 24-man body in June removed from the party former Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who once worked at the equipment development department, and his predecessor Wei Fenghe, who once led the Rocket Force unit that had also seen several officials purged.
Xi’s government has unseated at least 18 senior military figures since opening a corruption investigation last summer into hardware purchases dating back to 2017. In a clear indication of Beijing’s concerns about the country’s weapon procurement, the Communist Party called for changes to the military’s procurement system at the Third Plenum held in July. BLOOMBERG
