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China has warned large swaths of its business world, state sector and ruling Communist party that they face an intensified anti-corruption campaign as President Xi Jinping expands his hallmark crackdown on endemic graft.
In a communique issued on Wednesday, the party’s deeply feared internal watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said it would prioritise investigation into the finance, agricultural and pharmaceutical sectors as well as into state-owned enterprises, which play a central role in China’s economy.
The warning followed a speech by Xi on Monday to a meeting of senior leaders in Beijing in which the president, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, called for “tenacity, perseverance and precision” in the fight against corruption.
“It is essential to make it our top priority to crack down on any collusion between officials and businesspeople, combat profit-seeking activities with the help of power, and resolutely prevent interest groups and power groups from infiltrating the political sphere,” state media quoted Xi as saying.
The party discipline commission’s communique name-checked universities, sports and tobacco, sectors dominated by the state, for closer scrutiny. It also highlighted the problem of cross-border corruption and fraudulent official statistics, an issue the justice ministry has previously highlighted as damaging government credibility.
The campaign, the document said, demonstrated the party’s high degree of “self-consciousness about self-purification, self-improvement and self-innovation”.
Experts say Xi’s campaign is popular in China. But many people are wary about claims of success given the problem remains widespread.
In his speech, Xi said that while 10 years of unremitting anti-graft efforts had won an “overwhelming victory”, the situation remained “severe and complex”.
Xi has used the campaign both to root out genuine corruption, which many experts see as endemic in the party-state, as well as to target political rivals and their followers among the CCP’s almost 100mn members.
Since Xi assumed leadership of the party in 2012, investigations have been launched into millions of so-called “tigers and flies” — meaning high and low-ranking officials.
However, since 2017, the campaign has steadily broadened from party institutions and government departments to state-linked organisations and more recently to the private sector.
Over the past six months, the banner of anti-graft has been used to target senior members of China’s military and defence-linked, state-owned enterprises.
Among scores of military and party officials to have fallen under investigation or disappeared from public view are members of the Rocket Force, the arm of the People’s Liberation Army that controls China’s nuclear and conventional missile arsenals.
The CCDI has also increased the number of investigations into alleged corruption within its own ranks.
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