Nanjing’s top official investigated for corruption

The Communist Party chief of the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing is the latest senior cadre to be investigated for corruption under President Xi Jinping’s wide-ranging campaign against graft in public life.

“Nanjing city Communist Party secretary Yang Weize, suspected of serious violations of party disciplines and laws, is now under investigation,” the party’s graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said on its website, using the usual expression to describe corruption.

Yang ( 53), Nanjing's top official, was taken away from the coastal city by train by investigators from outside the area, the magazine Caixin reported, citing sources close to the situation as saying.

Yang, who took on his role as Nanjing party chief in 2011, is also a member of the local standing committee in Jiangsu province, the statement said.

He becomes the sixth party chief of a provincial capital and the eighth member of the party’s central committee to be investigated by corruption investigators since Mr Xi, who is general secretary of the Communist Party, began a campaign against graft when he assumed control of the main offices of the party in late 2012.

In December, China formally arrested former security tsar Zhou Yongkang and expelled him from the Communist Party, making him the highest-ranking official yet to be investigated for corruption.

Nanjing is a former capital and is a wealthy city with a population of about four million. It has become the focus of Sino-Japanese relations because of wartime atrocities committed here by Japanese troops during the invasion in 1937.

The campaign has targeted other officials who worked with Yang in Jiangsu province, including Zhang Junyuan, formerly deputy head in Jiangsu’s transportation department, and Ji Jianye, former mayor of Nanjing, who was expelled over a year ago.