PLA will not shy away from investigating China's top military leaders, says anti-corruption official

The People’s Liberation Army will no longer shy away from investigating high-level leaders to “maintain a positive image”, a PLA anti-graft official told China’s Global Times in an exclusive interview.

Major General Yu Bencheng said the long-standing practice had done great harm to the military.

In the past it had become so difficult to gain promotion in the army that people had put extra emphasis on establishing close links with those of senior rank, he said.

People in the military were most unlikely to report incidents of corruption involving their superiors because of this, Yu, former chief of the commission for discipline inspection in an unnamed unit under the PLA’s General Armament Department, said.

Before President Xi Jinping began his wide-ranging anti-corruption campaign two years ago, the top priority of the army’s graft crackdown had been to ensure stability in the military and maintain the image of its leaders, he said.

Yu said he had received reports showing that high-level officials were implicated in cases of corruption.