CHINA-INTERNAL: ANTI-CORRUPTION CAMPAIGN IN PLA
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The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily on its official Sina Weibo account disclosed on June that two more senior officers are under investigation, namely Kou Tie, former Commander of the Heilongjiang Provincial Military Command and Liu Zhanqi, former Commander of the Communications Division of the People's Armed Police Force. Both were initially probed in November 2014 by the CDIC units of the PLA and the Armed Police Force, respectively, and their cases were transferred to military procurators in May. Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military expert, told the Global Times, that "The new announcement has proved that there is no end in sight to the normalization of the anti-graft campaign within the military," and that it will take a long time to root out all the corrupt officials that have managed to get promoted in recent years.
Separately, General Liu Yuan, Political Commissar of the PLA's General Logistics Department (GLD) wrote in the June 15, 2015 edition of the Party theoretical fortnightly journal 'Qiu Shi' (Seeking Truth) that "viruses of corruption" have penetrated within the Chinese Communist Party and even among top officials. General Liu Yuan charged former CMC Vice Chairman Xu Caihou, who was caught up in the anti-graft campaign before his death in March, with inflicting "lethal and overall" damage on the selection and appointment of military officials. He added that incompetent officials are entrenched in their positions, while decent ones cannot be promoted. Liu Yuan added "Who can be spared punishment when the former CMC chairman has been probed? We must persist in our zero-tolerance and firm determination to carry on the anti-graft campaign … No officials, regardless of their rank, can be spared from the campaign, which has no time limit."
(Comment: This is the fourth time this year that the PLA has announced that senior military personnel are being investigated for discipline violations. Between mid-January and late April probes into 33 senior military officials were made public, including investigations into Guo Zhenggang, deputy political commissar of the Zhejiang Provincial Military Command - son of Guo Boxiong, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC).)
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