China’s unrelenting anti-corruption campaign in the armed forces has felled another top General — a former ally of the disgraced security tsar Zhou Yongkang.
The Hong Kong based South China Morning Post (SCMP) is reporting that General Wang Jianping (62), deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department under the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), was arrested on Thursday afternoon while on an inspection tour to Chengdu, Sichuan province.
The daily is reporting that Gen. Wang’s wife, his secretary and former secretary were also detained on the same day. An unnamed source told SCMP that “(Gen.) Wang was arrested by military prosecutors in Chengdu while he was on an inspection trip. His wife and secretary were taken away in Beijing on Thursday”.
The trickle-down arrests have followed the detentions of three top heavyweights — Zhao Yonkang, and two former Vice Chairmen of the apex CMC-- Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou.
Gen. Xu died of cancer in custody before he could be brought to trial, while Gen. Guo received a lifetime jail sentence last month, making him the most senior PLA figure, since 1949 to have been convicted of corruption.
Gen. Wang becomes the first general, still in active service, who has been netted in the on-going anti-graft drive, which was launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013.
The deep rooted revamp under President Xi’s watch appears to be causing considerable consternation within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The SCMP had previously reported that three senior PLA officers had committed suicide earlier this month. These include Major-General Chen Jie (54) of the newly formed Southern Theater Command who reportedly killed himself on August 5 through an overdose of sleeping pills. Earlier, a publicity director of a political office in Nanjing, also of the Southern Theatre Command, had committed suicide. Besides, Senior Captain Li Fuwen, director of the navy’s logistics enterprises management centre, jumped to death from a building in the navy’s complex in Beijing, the daily reported, citing two unnamed independent sources.
