China cracking down on military corruption

HONG KONG, China -- Chinese authorities are closing in on a corruption ring that operates within the People's Liberation Army, which it says has links to a top-ranking official who defected to the United States.

A military source in Beijing said Senior Colonel Xu Junping decided to leave China late last year to avoid being charged with corruption and related economic crimes.

IN DEPTH China's National People's Congress

The source told CNN that the leader of the corruption ring is believed to be the veteran head of military intelligence General Ji Shengde, who was sentenced to serve a 15-year jail term last year.

The source said the ring consisted mainly of intelligence officers in the army's General Staff Department (GSD) as well those in the Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) of the Defense Ministry.

"A major source of income for Ji and his cronies was offering protection to smuggling activities, such as those perpetrated by the Yuan Hua group in Xiamen, Fujian province," the source said.

That group has been implicated in one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit China since the communist party assumed power in 1949.

"Xu was not personally involved in the Xiamen smuggling case. But he apparently decided to flee to avoid responsibility for other graft-related crimes," the source told CNN.

Xu left China for the U.S. to take part in a training seminar at Harvard University in 1998 and 1999.

He defected while on an official trip there late last year.

A Western diplomat familiar with the PLA said Communist party and army authorities had recently hiked investigations into the activities of Ji and his alleged accomplices.

Many of the officials involved have been detained or put under surveillance.

"Party leaders including President Jiang Zemin have discovered that Ji had built up a big following in the military intelligence establishment," the diplomat said.

"In order to preserve stability, the authorities have been carrying out their investigations and arrests cautiously. And the official media will not report on the number of Ji's cronies who will be incriminated -- or the lengths of sentences," the diplomat said.

The diplomat added that the GSD was considered one of the disaster zones in corruption in the PLA.

Aside from offering protection to smuggling and other crimes, quite a number of GSD officers made a big killing by taking advantage of the 1998 order that the PLA sever links with all its business units.

Audit of Chinese officials turns up $11 billion in mismanaged funds
October 27, 2000

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