China Graft Probe Nets High-Ranking Official

One of the highest-ranking Chinese officials ever to be caught in a corruption scandal has been kicked out of the Communist Party and will probably be stripped of his posts after he accepted more than $4 million in bribes with the help of his mistress, state media said Thursday.

Authorities have recommended that Cheng Kejie be removed as vice chairman of the National People’s Congress, China’s highest lawmaking body, the New China News Agency said.

The legislator now awaits criminal prosecution and is almost certain to become the latest high-profile casualty in Beijing’s war against official corruption. Last month, a former provincial deputy governor was executed for taking $650,000 in bribes.

The news agency said Cheng amassed the shady gains between 1992 and 1998, when he served as party chairman of Guangxi province in the south.

Investigators charged that Cheng, in collusion with his married mistress, Li Ping, steered loans and contracts to businesses that in turn rewarded the two conspirators with kickbacks amounting to $4.6 million. Cheng and Li, whose adulterous relationship was emphasized in the official media, squirreled away the money “for their future marriage,” the reports said.

Cheng, who is also a congress deputy, has confessed to the crimes and has offered to return all the money, the news agency said. It did not specify where Cheng is being held or whether Li has also been arrested.

Cheng is one of the most senior Chinese officials to be nailed in Beijing’s aggressive anti-corruption drive. The biggest tiger netted in the campaign was former Politburo member and Beijing party boss Chen Xitong, who was convicted in 1998 for his part in a $2.2-billion bribery scandal.

Even now, investigators are holed up in the seaside city of Xiamen, on China’s southern coast, delving into the biggest smuggling ring in Communist China’s history. The sting has already resulted in the arrests of dozens of officials and may edge into the ranks of the political elite in Beijing.

President Jiang Zemin and other top leaders have recognized the toll that corruption has taken on China’s fast-growing economy and the contribution of such misdeeds to the Communist Party’s weakening grip on power. Corruption consistently ranks as the No. 1 grievance of the general public and has sparked widespread unrest in China’s vast countryside and smaller cities and towns.

A commentary in today’s People’s Daily, the party mouthpiece, vowed that the party “will definitely show no mercy” to those caught abusing their positions, regardless of their rank. But many average Chinese doubt whether the top tier of the country’s leadership will ever come under scrutiny for potential misdeeds.

The commentary also blames Western influence for the rise in corruption, a problem that Mao Tse-tung and his cronies succeeded in virtually wiping out in the early days of the People’s Republic. The article complained that anti-China forces have spread their bourgeois ideals and lifestyles to China, making some people prey to immoral behavior.

Cheng’s downfall was foreshadowed last month when he failed to appear at the National People’s Congress, over which he helps preside as vice chairman of the body’s standing committee. At the time, officials said only that Cheng was under investigation for unspecified economic crimes.

Just days after the congress opened, Hu Changqing, the former deputy governor from Jiangxi province, was executed for taking kickbacks, a case that received widespread media attention here as a clear example of Beijing’s seriousness in rooting out official malfeasance.

Hu was the highest-ranking official to be put to death for corruption since the founding of Communist China in 1949.