A senior government official in Sichuan Province is being investigated in relation to allegations of “severe discipline violations,” a term that is often a euphemism for corruption, Chinese state media said.
Zhao Miao (趙苗), a senior official in Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, was taken away for questioning by anticorruption investigators on Thursday last week, Xinhua news agency said late on Saturday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has launched a sweeping crackdown on corruption since taking power, warning that the problem threatens the Chinese Communist Party’s survival.
The most senior politician to be ensnared in a graft scandal since the party gained power in 1949 is former domestic security head Zhou Yongkang (周永康), whose power base was Sichuan.
Investigators have questioned a raft of senior government officials over corruption and links to Zhou, though it was not clear whether the investigation into Zhao had anything to do with Zhou.
Born in 1959, Zhao is a standing committee member of the Chengdu municipal committee of the CCP, Xinhua said.
Xinhua gave no other details of the investigation.
Separately, Xinhua reported that Shen Weichen (申維辰), party secretary and executive vice president of the China Association for Science and Technology, had been put under investigation for suspected corruption.
As China’s largest national organization of scientific and technological workers, the association maintains close ties with millions of scientists, engineers and others working in science and technology, according to its Web site.
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