What’s new: Chinese authorities said they are launching a graft probe into the former chief of the political advisory body in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province.
Han Yong, an ex-chairman of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is suspected of “serious violations of discipline and law” — a common euphemism for corruption, according to a one-line statement from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
The 67-year-old is the third provincial-level official ensnared in the country’s wide-ranging corruption crackdown since the party’s 20th National Congress held last October. His probe follows graft investigations into the former head of Shanghai’s top legislative body, Dong Yunhu, and former party chief of Guizhou province Sun Zhigang.
The background: Han, a native of Changchun in Jilin, worked for around over 15 years in his home province’s procuratorial bodies, starting as a clerk and later becoming the province’s deputy chief prosecutor and director of the provincial procuratorate’s anti-corruption bureau in 1996.
He then spent over a decade in Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region beginning 2004, serving in roles including president of the Communist Party of China school and the party chief of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the economic and quasi-military organization that fulfills governmental functions in the region.
Han worked in Shaanxi for six years from 2016 to 2022, before he was named deputy director of the Committee on Population, Resources and Environment of the country’s top political advisory body and worked in that role until March.
Contact reporter Kelly Wang (jingzhewang@caixin.com) and editor Bertrand Teo (bertrandteo@caixin.com)
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