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Ling Jihua
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Ling Jihua is under investigation by party graft-busters. Photo: Reuters

Ling Jihua, former aide to China's ex-president Hu Jintao, placed under graft probe

Party watchdog investigates United Front Work Department head for discipline violations, just days after an apparent pledge of loyalty to Xi

Ling Jihua

Ling Jihua, the one-time top aide to former president Hu Jintao , is being investigated by the nation's anti-graft watchdog.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a brief statement yesterday that 58-year-old Ling was under investigation for "suspected serious disciplinary violations", a term that usually refers to corruption. It gave no further details.

Ling is the latest top official to come under a corruption cloud since President Xi Jinping launched a massive anti-corruption campaign more than two years ago. That campaign has already led to the downfall of the nation's former security tsar Zhou Yongkang and Xu Caihou, the former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission.

The announcement comes two years after Ling's political career was dealt a major blow with the controversy surrounding the death of his son Ling Gu in a Ferrari crash in March 2012.

Ling was the chief of the General Office of the Communist Party's Central Committee and Hu's personal secretary before 2011 - a post that is thought to have put him at the centre of the country's highest reaches of political decision making.

He was also thought to be a political rising star, with the chance of elevation to the supreme Politburo Standing Committee in a party leadership reshuffle in November 2012.

But he was given less high-profile positions after the crash. He is a vice-chairman of the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and head of the United Front Work Department.

There were signs that the net was closing in on Ling, with the authorities launching investigations into people close to him in the past few months.

In June, investigators detained his eldest brother Ling Zhengce, a senior official in Shanxi province.

Ling surprised many last week with an article he penned for party magazine , in which he quoted Xi at least 16 times, a move seen as a last-ditch gesture by Ling to pledge loyalty.

Renmin University political scientist Zhang Ming said Ling's downfall showed that reading a politician's fate through his public appearances no longer worked. "When people close to you are being taken down one by one, that's how you know your days are numbered," Zhang said.

Political analyst Johnny Lau Yui-siu also said the announcement showed that Ling's pledges of loyalty were futile.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Ex-Hu aide Ling Jihua probed for graft
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