Two more Chinese military officials face graft probe

China's powerful People's Liberation Army continues to reel under the anti-corruption campaign initiated by President Xi Jingping as two more senior officials faced graft allegations, taking the total number of officers probed this year to 35.
Kou Tie, former commander of Heilongjiang Provincial Military Command and Liu Zhanqi, former commander of the communications division of Armed Police Force, were under investigation for serious disciplinary violations, an official term for corruption, The PLA Daily, official organ of the 2.3 million-strong Chinese military, said.
Both Kou and Liu were initially probed in November 2014 by the disciplinary watchdogs of the military and the Armed Police Force and their cases were transferred to military procurators in May, it said.

This is the fourth time this year the PLA has announced that senior military personnel are suspected of disciplinary violations.
Between mid-January and late April probes into 33 senior military officials were made public, including Guo Zhenggang, deputy political commissar of the Zhejiang Provincial Military Command.
They were all indicted in the massive corruption campaign initiated by President Xi Jinping who is also the head of the country's military and the ruling Communist Party of China.

"The new announcement has proved that there is no end in sight to the normalisation of the anti-graft campaign within the military," Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military expert, told state-run Global Times.

He said it will take long time to root out all the corrupt officials that have managed to get promoted in recent years.
Officials in the communication division of the Armed Police Force can be tempted by corruption during building projects, Ni said.
"Viruses of corruption" have penetrated within the Communist Party of China and even among top officials, wrote General Liu Yuan, political commissar of the General Logistics Department of the PLA, in an article published in the Party-run Qiushi magazine on Monday.
Former Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Xu Caihou, who was caught up in the anti-graft campaign, inflicted "lethal and overall" damage on the selection and appointment of military officials, Liu said.

Incompetent officials are entrenched in their positions, while decent ones cannot be promoted, he said.
"Who can be spared punishment when the former CMC chairman has been probed? We must persist in our zero-tolerance and firm determination to carry on the anti-graft campaign...No officials, regardless of their rank, can be spared from the campaign, which has no time limit," Liu added.