The big bribes in the junior ranks of China's cadres

The head of a major hospital in Yunnan took allegedly cash bribes worth 35 million yuan (HK$44 million) and 100 flats with as many parking places valued at more than 80 million yuan over the past 10 years, according to a national graft watchdog.

It's just one of the cases of junior cadres involved in major corruption that continue to be exposed on the mainland as President Xi Jinping's anticorruption campaign grinds into its third year.

Wang Tianchao allegedly took the bribes while chief of the First People's Hospital in Kunming. They were in return for awarding hospital construction projects, contracts for medical equipment and supplies, and giving doctors promotions, according to Xu Jinhui, the head of the Supreme People's Procuratorate's anti-graft bureau.

Wang's case was listed as "typical" of the sort of cases involving junior officials that prosecutors had vowed to investigate in the first quarter of this year.

Wang was announced to be under investigation for "serious violations of party discipline and the law" last September on the website of the Communist Party's anti-graft agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Mainland media reported that Wang's downfall was related to disgraced Yunnan party chief Bai Enpei. Wang was said to have set up a health-care unit just for Bai.