China’s religious affairs chief Cui Maohu under investigation for corruption
- The former Yunnan provincial official has also been dismissed from the post he was appointed to in June last year
- Cui is the third senior official to be placed under investigation this week along with two former banking chiefs
State news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday that Cui Maohu, 57, has been placed under investigation for suspected severe violations of party discipline and the country’s laws, the customary euphemism for corruption.
A native of Yunnan province, Cui spent his entire political career in his home province until he was promoted to head the religious affairs body and made deputy head of the United Front Work Department in June last year.
It is customary for the religious affairs chief to be made a deputy director of the United Front Work Department, which is responsible for relations with non-Communist Party bodies at home and abroad.
Cui, a former teacher at a vocational school, started to climb up the political ladder when he was appointed deputy head of a small township in Qujing city in Yunnan in 1989.
For the next two decades he held a variety of administrative and personnel roles, becoming head of the provincial human resources and social welfare department in 2014.
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In 2017, he was promoted to become party boss of Lijiang city, where he stayed before he was made Yunnan vice governor in 2021.
Although details of his alleged offences have not been disclosed, two of his former bosses in Yunnan have previously been sentenced for corruption.
It is unclear if Cui is implicated in the cases of Bai and Qin and he publicly denounced the two when he was Lijiang party boss.
On Thursday, it was announced that the retired deputy chairman of Chongqing municipal people’s congress, Zheng Hong, was under investigation.
On Friday, it emerged that the former deputy party chief of Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Jiang Zhigang, was also under investigation.
Jiang had previously served as deputy director of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and organisation department head of Beijing’s municipal party committee.
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Two former senior officials in the financial sector – Wang Jianhong, former party boss and head of the Bank of China’s Beijing branch, and Wang Weijun, former Henan branch head at China Development Bank – are also being investigated on suspicion of graft.
