The South China Morning Post reported on October 2, that the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) had announced on October 2, that Dong Hong, a senior Chinese government inspector and long-time colleague of Vice-President Wang Qishan including when the latter was President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft tsar, has been placed under a corruption probe. Dong Hong was one of the group leaders of central inspection groups during Xi Jinping’s first term when Wang Qishan was head of the powerful anti-corruption agency the Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC). Some past media reports about Dong Hong, as well as his biography on Baike, China’s equivalent of Wikipedia, were no longer accessible by late Friday afternoon. The State-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao reported in 2014 that Dong Hong had a long-term working relationship with Wang Qishan beginning in 1998, with overlapping terms in Guangdong, Hainan and Beijing, and at the now-defunct State Council General Office of Economic Reform. Chinese news outlet Caixin said that although Dong Hong had worked in Guangdong since 1992, he was promoted to be the provincial government’s deputy secretary-general only in 2000, around the time Wang Qishan left Guangdong. Dong Hong was also a member of staff at the Hubei Party Committee's General Office, according to a 2017 report by Hebei province’s official news outlet. Born in 1953, Dong Hong later became a deputy head of the CCP CC's Party Literature Research Centre in 2006, before rejoining Wang Qishan at the CDIC as a senior inspector, including as leader of one of the central inspection groups.

(Comment: Dong Hong's arrest tends to corroborate earlier reports that differences have arisen between Xi Jinping and Wang Qishan, probably his closest friend. It would also be a warning shot to Wang Qishan to desist from any moves aimed at Xi Jinping.)