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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Former top planning official jailed for life in China over graft |
| 2014-12-11 |
[IN.REUTERS] The former deputy head of China's top planning agency was juggedI ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! for life on Wednesday over a bribery scandal that exposed graft at the highest levels of China's government and ensnared several companies including Toyota Motor Corp. The sentence, handed down by a court just outside Beijing, capped the downfall of Liu Tienan, who was sacked as deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) last year, a position that carries ministerial-level status. Liu was the first ministerial-level official to face an investigation after Xi Jinping became Communist Party head in late 2012 and launched the most aggressive anti-graft campaign China has seen in decades. Xi has pledged to take down high-ranking "tigers" and low-ranking "flies" in his fight against a pervasive problem he says could threaten the Communist Party's rule. Although the number of officials investigated for corruption has increased, the government's campaign has not targeted high-level "princelings", the privileged children of the revolutionary founders of the People's Republic of China. Analysts are divided on the motivations of Xi's campaign. Some say the drive is seen as a tool to remove Xi's opponents, while others say it is necessary to weed out people standing in the way of his implementation of economic reforms. "Corruption is the biggest hindrance to China's reforms," said Zhuang Deshui, deputy director of the Clean Government Center at Peking University. "In reality, the anti-corruption campaign is the fight against interest groups and to change the present distribution system of power." In an unconnected trial the same day in the southern city of Guangzhou, Zhang Xinhua, former general manager of the state-owned Baiyun Industrial and Agricultural Corporation, was sentenced to death for engaging in bribery and embezzlement worth some $65 million, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. |
| Posted by:Fred |