China is auditing the State Grid Corp of China, the utility said in the wake of a magazine report that one of the most senior executives in the world’s largest utility was under investigation.
Caixin, a well-respected Chinese business magazine, reported this week that Zhu Changlin (朱長林), head of the State Grid’s North China operations, is under investigation, leading industry and government sources to believe that State Grid could be next in line in the government’s campaign against graft.
It was unclear whether the probe into Zhu, which could not be independently verified by reporters, is related to the audit.
In a statement via its microblog on Thursday, the State Grid called the audit “routine.”
“This economic accountability audit is a routine audit arranged according to our systems,” the statement said, without giving further details.
The statement added that State Grid is one of 14 major state-owned enterprises, including seven energy-related companies, being audited.
Industry sources told reporters that State Grid Corp — which transmits and distributes power to 1.1 billion people across close to 90 percent of China — is the central target of this round of audits.
The goal of the audits into State Grid and other organizations is unclear, but Chinese industry officials said it is unlikely that auditors will emerge empty-handed.
“They [auditors] will definitely uncover a bunch of problems, big or small, from an audit of any big state-owned enterprises,” a senior Chinese power industry official said.
The audit, which started last month, has sparked investor concerns that Beijing may consider breaking up State Grid’s monopoly.
Shares of State Grid subsidiaries that produce power equipment, including Henan Pinggao Electric Co Ltd and XJ Electric, have fallen sharply in the past month, as they rely on State Grid’s spending on ultra-high-voltage power transmission projects to bring in revenue.
Investors are also worried about an investigation into State Grid chairman Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), a strong proponent of the controversial ultra-high-voltage technology.
Liu says the technology would revolutionize long-distance power transmission and help resolve China’s geographical energy imbalance, but critics say the technology is costly and untested, and could make the system vulnerable to blackouts.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has vowed to target powerful “tigers” as well as lowly “flies” in a fight against corruption that he says threatens the party’s existence.
“It’s beating [gongs] in the mountains to stun tigers,” another source said, invoking a Chinese proverb.
PetroChina and its parent firm, China National Petroleum Corp are at the center of one of the biggest corruption investigations into the Chinese state sector in years.
In March, the chairman and the president of Three Gorges Corp, the company that built the US$59 billion project for the world’s biggest hydropower scheme, stepped down, but the pair have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The party’s antigraft watchdog published a scathing report in February this year, saying some Three Gorges officials were guilty of nepotism, shady property deals and dodgy bidding procedures. The dam was funded by a special levy paid by all citizens.
Analysts say a central purpose of the anticorruption campaign may be to consolidate Xi’s power and remove opposition.
“It is a way to strengthen control... We cannot expect that Xi Jinping will take action against corruption only because he wants to make things clean. There is a hidden agenda,” Hong Kong-based political analyst Johnny Lau (劉銳紹) said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS