Cadre kills himself by jumping from hotel
The Shanxi official was at a gathering called to discuss adherence to directives
A Communist Party personnel boss from Shanxi province has committed suicide in Beijing while attending a gathering of party leaders, the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po reported yesterday.
Wang Tongzhi , head of the Provincial Organisation Department, killed himself on Tuesday by jumping from the military-run Jingxi Hotel, the newspaper quoted sources as saying. The report did not give any more details.
Sources said Mr Wang, promoted to the Shanxi post in August, had been attending a meeting that began on Tuesday, at which Vice-President Zeng Qinghong , the head of the Central Party School, made a keynote speech.
The meeting, also attended by Wu Guanzheng , secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and He Guoqiang , Central Organisation Department chief, focused on the maintenance of party members' 'progressiveness', or cadres' adherence to the party directives.
Although it was not immediately clear what drove Mr Wang to claim his own life, sources said speculation had centred on a possible connection with corruption scandals, rampant among personnel officials in other provinces.
'But given his five-month stay in the province, it would be difficult to believe he had been implicated in local corruption scandals yet to be investigated,' one source said.
Mr Wang was deputy director of the Organisation Department in Gansu before his promotion last year.
He was rumoured to have been close to President Hu Jintao when they both worked in the provincial Communist Party Youth League in Gansu two decades ago.
Shanxi deputy party secretary Hou Wujie , the third-highest provincial cadre, was sacked early this week for allegedly taking US$100,000 in bribes during his tenure as party secretary of Taiyuan City .
'Mr Hou's removal was a sign reflecting how serious the corruption problems are among provincial officials,' said one source.
Just last month, Xu Guojian , former head of the Organisation Department of Jiangsu province , was stripped of his party membership and official posts after allegedly soliciting about 4.6 million yuan from lower-ranking officials seeking promotion.
The former chairwoman of the Heilongjiang People's Political Consultative Conference, Han Guizhi , was removed from her post in 2003 for involvement in an influence-peddling scandal while head of the Organisation Department in Heilongjiang .
Sources said it was not clear whether Mr Wang's death and Mr Hou's removal would affect the widely tipped promotion of Shanxi party secretary Tian Chengping to the central government.
