File photo of Kou Tie, former commander of the Heilongjiang Provincial Military Command under the PLA Shenyang Military Area Command. (Photo/dbw.cn)
File photo of Liu Zhanqi, former commander of the traffic troops of the Chinese People's Armed Police Force. (Photo/81.cn)
The Chinese military on Tuesday announced that two more senior military officials are under investigation for serious disciplinary violations.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Daily said on its official Sina Weibo account that the two officers under investigation are Kou Tie, former commander of the Heilongjiang Provincial Military Command and Liu Zhanqi, former commander of the communications division of the Armed Police Force.
Both Kou and Liu were initially probed in November 2014 by the disciplinary watchdogs of the military and the Armed Police Force, respectively, and their cases were transferred to military procurators in May.
This is the fourth time this year the PLA has announced that senior military personnel are suspected of 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).
"The new announcement has proved that there is no end in sight to the normalization of the anti-graft campaign within the military," Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military expert, told the Global Times, adding that it will take a long time to root out all the corrupt officials that have managed to get promoted in recent years.
Officials in the communication division of the Armed Police Force, which is responsible for traffic infrastructure construction and repair work, can be tempted by corruption during building projects, Ni explained.
"Viruses of corruption" have penetrated within the Communist Party of China and even among top officials, wrote General Liu Yuan, political commissar of the General Logistics Department of the PLA, in an article published in the Party-run Qiushi magazine on Monday.
Former CMC vice chairman Xu Caihou, who was caught up in the anti-graft campaign before his March death, inflicted "lethal and overall" damage on the selection and appointment of military officials, Liu argued. He added that incompetent officials are entrenched in their positions, while decent ones cannot be promoted.
"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," Liu Yuan went on to say.
