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Chinese authorities are stepping up a crackdown on corruption, including confiscating the passports of some local leaders, underscoring President Xi Jinping's determination to root out graft.
Vice-Minister of Public Security Li Dongsheng became the second member of the Communist Party's central committee to be probed this year for suspected corruption. The capital of southern Guangdong province confiscated the passports of 2,014 village chiefs to prevent corrupt local officials from fleeing abroad, the Guangzhou Daily said on Saturday.
Targeting those Xi has described as both "tigers and flies" - cadres at the top and bottom of the power ladder - may help bolster the party's image as economic expansion slows and public discontent over corruption increases. The agency in charge of investigating graft last month started a second round of inspections into bribery and influence-peddling that includes six provinces and two ministries.
"When these people are punished, it brings enormous support for Xi Jinping's leadership," said Ding Xueliang, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who teaches Chinese politics. "Xi wants to use power to achieve things - he is the kind of individual who is trying to change the pattern of Chinese politics."
China's new leadership, headed by Xi and Premier Li Keqiang, took office in November 2012 in a once-a-decade power transition. In a speech to the Politburo two days after taking over as party general secretary, Xi told his fellow leaders that unless they address corruption, social unrest may rise and it could lead of the demise of the party.
Corruption was third among the 10 top concerns of the public in 2013, up from seventh in 2012, according to a survey carried out by the website of the People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, every March before the National People's Congress.
Since Xi became party chief, at least 15 ministerial-level officials have been probed for corruption, according to a December 21 China Daily report. Among the 205 members of the party's central panel that was elected when Xi took office, two are under investigation - Li Dongsheng and Jiang Jiemin, the former head of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration commission who was removed in September.
The investigation into Li on suspicion of "serious violations of discipline and laws" was announced on December 20 on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
During Hu Jintao's decade-long tenure as party boss through 2012, two members of the central committee were purged for graft - Chen Liangyu, the party chief of Shanghai, in 2008, and Bo Xilai, party secretary of Chongqing, in 2012. Bo, who was once mentioned as a possible candidate for the Politburo standing committee in the run-up to last year's power transition, was sentenced to life in prison in September for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.
Bo's main political supporter before his downfall was Zhou Yongkang, who was head of the nation's security apparatus and a member of the Politburo standing committee under Hu. Zhou, who retired in November last year, is under investigation for graft, the New York Times reported on December 16, citing people with political connections to senior officials.
Li Dongsheng and Jiang Jiemin are the latest officials with ties to Zhou to be probed by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Others include Li Chuncheng, a deputy party secretary in Sichuan province who served as deputy party secretary for the provincial capital Chengdu during Zhou's tenure in the province's top position.
"This is not about corruption, it's about cleaning up and putting the party's house in order after the power struggle that took place before the leadership transition in 2012," said Ding. "Xi is deeply worried about the huge power system Zhou Yongkang built up and he is trying to bring back stability and discipline at the top levels of the party".
At the same time, Xi's campaign against graft has extended across the political spectrum from executives at state-owned companies to provincial governors and village officials.
Guangzhou, the capital of southern Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong, last week told the heads of villages under its jurisdiction to hand over their passports and obtain approval for overseas travel, according to reports in the Guangzhou Daily and Nanfang Daily on Saturday. The policy was issued after investigators found a village party secretary suspected of land corruption obtained Australian citizenship and fled China, they said.
Mei Heqing, spokesman for the Guangzhou anti-graft agency, said a quarter of the city's corruption cases involve village chiefs, the Nanfang Daily reported.
The provincial discipline inspection commission said last week that a former deputy mayor of the city, Cao Jianliao, now party secretary of Zengcheng city in Guangdong, was put under investigation for suspected "severe discipline violations," language that signals a corruption probe.
More than 18,000 corrupt Chinese officials fled the country since the mid-1990s with about 800 billion yuan ($132 billion) in embezzled funds, China National Radio reported in June 2011, citing a report from the central bank.
The most popular destinations for fugitives include the US, Canada, Australia and Singapore, the Xinhua News Agency said in an October 22 report.
