What’s new: The former Communist Party chief of Southwest China’s Guizhou province is being investigated for suspected “serious violations of discipline and law,” a common euphemism for corruption, according to a one-line statement published Monday by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the country’s top graft buster.
The Guizhou provincial party committee also held a meeting to announce the CCDI’s probe into Sun Zhigang, saying that Sun had “seriously tarnished the image of the party, seriously betrayed the trust of the party’s Central Committee and the people of the province, seriously damaged Guizhou’s good political ecology with a clean and upright atmosphere,” the party-run Guizhou Daily reported Tuesday.
The 69-year-old became the first retired provincial party chief to be investigated for corruption since the party’s 20th National Congress in October last year. He is also the latest senior official in Guizhou to be caught in the anti-graft dragnet.
The background: Sun worked in Hubei province for more than two decades, rising from deputy head of Wuhan’s economics commission in 1985 to secretary-general of the provincial party committee in 2002.
In 2006, he moved to the eastern province of Anhui, where he pioneered a government drug-purchasing program that became known as the “Anhui model.”
In 2010, he became head of the State Council’s medical reform office. During his tenure, Sun pushed to deepen health care reform in the country.
The probe into Sun was announced as China’s health care industry is in the middle of an unprecedented corruption crackdown.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
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