Ex-top China military official, facing bribery probe, dies

[webfact]

Ex-top China military official, facing bribery probe, dies

BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese military's former second-highest ranking officer, Xu Caihou, who had been under investigation for alleged bribe-taking and brokering of promotions, has died in a hospital of cancer, the state Xinhua News Agency reported early Monday. He was 71.

A former deputy chairman of the ruling Communist Party's Central Military Commission, Xu was the most senior military figure detained in a sweeping crackdown on corruption within the party launched by President Xi Jinping.

Xu died of advanced bladder cancer that had spread throughout his body and of multiple organ failure, Xinhua said.

Xu had been expelled from the party in June and his rank as general revoked, but an indictment had not yet been announced. The Xinhua report said the criminal investigation against him would now be dropped because of his death.

Officials last year had been quoted as saying that Xu was ill with bladder cancer and would get appropriate treatment, but also that the case against him would go forward, in a sign of Xi's determination to root out wrongdoing at all levels. In addition to being president and head of the party, Xi also chairs the powerful party and government commissions that oversee the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army.

Xu's death lends needed momentum to Xi's campaign against powerful corrupt officials, said Beijing-based historian and political analyst Zhang Lifan.

However, since Xi still faces a potential backlash against those entrenched interests, he "must speed up his pace," Zhang said.

Xu had been under investigation since early last year by the party's anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection.

Few details were ever released about the investigation into Xu, but Xinhua said he was accused of taking advantage of his position to promote people and had accepted "huge amounts of bribes personally and through his family."

Like most of China's leading generals, Xu never saw combat, serving almost his entire career as a political commissar before being appointed to the Central Military Commission in 1999. Under former president Hu Jintao, Xu was named one its three CMC vice chairmen, along with Xi, then serving as China's vice president. He stepped down from the commission when he retired from the military in 2012.

Phoenix Weekly, a Hong Kong-based magazine with strong military connections reported that large amounts of cash, jade, gems, paintings and rare antiques had been found in Xu's Beijing mansion, items frequently used as bribes to avoid leaving a paper trail for investigators.

Much of the corruption in the military is believed to involve the selling of positions, seen as having a corrosive effect on military preparedness and morale.

Xu's downfall followed an investigation into another leading general, former logistics department chief Gu Junshan, who allegedly amassed a huge fortune through embezzlement, kickbacks and the selling of favors.

Xu and Gu were the most prominent of 16 high-ranking officers placed under investigation or convicted of corruption and abuse of power under Xi.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-03-16

[Publicus]

Xi Jinping's two year old campaign against corruption in China has purged almost all his political opponents and enemies to make Xi the most powerful leader since Mao Tse-tung, who even the Chinese Communist Party teaches was "70 percent right.".

Now comes the blowback from his regrouping political enemies, to include the PLA which is massively corrupt and incompetent due to its increasing decentralization by regional warlord political generals.

Decentralization as the PRChina develops economically is Xi's greatest and most immediate problem, which is why he's accumulated the kind or power the CCP would never give to a leader after Deng Xiao Peng.

Xi's whole idea is to strengthen Beijing's centralized control over China's rapidly developing regions that have gained a spontaneous and gradual economic and financial autonomy from Beijing, thus threatening the CCP unitary state and government.

China's development of the past 30 years has produced cities such as Chongching, Guangzhou, Chengju, Guilien, and others that have developed into huge, wealthy, increasingly independent metropolises, to dominate their provinces and area regions. The regional CCP leaders have bought the local and regional PLA commanders lock, stock and barrel, leaving Beijing on the margin of government and finance at best.

People in all parts of the PRChina are recalling the old Chinese saying of independence and autonomy, that, "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away."

Indeed, Beijing hasn't ever been farther away from the rich, powerful, diverse, always decentralized regions of China. Beijing is worried it is losing its centrifugal force, because it is in fact losing it. It might be too late for Xi to stop this movement away from Beijing by newly empowered and very rich local and regional leaders who have no reason to remain tied to Beijing.

Edited March 16, 2015 by Publicus

[Rancid]

Dead men tell no stories and even better don't implicate anyone else.