What’s new: China’s top graft buster has launched an investigation into the deputy head of the Guizhou provincial corruption watchdogs, making him the latest in a string of officials of that rank to be ensnared in the country’s anti-graft dragnet.
Zhang Ping, deputy secretary of Guizhou’s discipline inspection commission and deputy director of the provincial supervisory commission, is suspected of “serious violations of (Communist Party) discipline and law,” according to a one-line statement published Wednesday by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. The phrase is a common euphemism for corruption.
The background: Zhang has spent nearly three decades in the southwestern province’s discipline inspection and supervision system, rising from a municipal anti-graft official in 1992 to the provincial roles in the late 2010s, after a brief stint leading the legislature in Guizhou’s Anshun city.
In addition to the 59-year-old, more than a dozen people who served as deputy secretaries of provincial discipline inspection commissions have been investigated for graft since President Xi Jinping launched his anti-corruption drive in late 2012, according to an incomplete count by Caixin.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
