Hubei vice-governor sacked after corruption probe

China’s Communist Party has fired a senior provincial official for “suspected serious disciplinary violations”, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday, making him the latest target in a crackdown on corruption.

Guo Youming, the vice-governor of the central province of Hubei, was removed from his post after China’s corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), announced a probe into the official this week.

The Xinhua report, which cited the ruling party’s central Organisation Department, gave no further details, but the term 'discipline violations' is generally used to denote corruption.

Guo’s dismissal comes a day after China launched a pilot programme to make new officials disclose their assets as part of an anti-graft campaign, a step critics say is critical to weed out official corruption.

The government this week also announced that two other officials were being probed over graft allegations.

Xu Jie, a deputy head of the petitions office, has been sacked for suspected graft issues, while Cai Rongsheng, head of admissions at Beijing’s prestigious Renmin University, is under investigation, in what state media said was related to “corruption cases involving large amounts of money”.