Ex-Xinjiang official under investigation by China’s top anti-corruption watchdog
- Li Pengxin, who oversaw a purge of education officials in the far-western region, is being investigated for ‘suspected serious violations of discipline and law’
- Li was formerly party chief of a prefecture in Qinghai, where dozens of officials have been detained over a string of corruption and environmental scandals
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said on its website on Monday that Li, 63, the former deputy secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region’s Communist Party committee and secretary of the region’s education work committee, was being investigated for “suspected serious violations of discipline and law” – the usual euphemism for corruption.
The announcement came just days after the Politburo urged its discipline inspection and supervision organs to make more of an effort to tighten the political oversight of party cadres and target industries and places where corruption is rife.
The Politburo’s meeting on Friday also announced that the CCDI would hold its plenary session, where it sets out the main focus of its work for the year, between January 8 and January 10.
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A Shanxi native, Li spent the first three decades of his political career in the northwestern Qinghai province, where around half the population are ethnic minorities, after he graduated from Qinghai Normal University with a degree of Chinese studies.
He served in various Communist Youth League posts in the province in 1990s, then a common route for younger cadres to rise up the ranks.
Li achieved vice-ministerial rank at the age of 45 in 2005, when he was promoted to become a member of Qinghai’s standing committee and party chief of the Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan autonomous prefecture.
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Beijing’s anti-corruption and environment watchdogs have been investigating corruption and breaches of environmental protection laws in Haixi, detaining dozens of local officials in the process.
Wen Guodong, Li’s successor in Haixi, turned himself in to the corruption watchdog in 2020. Last year he was given an 11-year jail term and fined 2 million yuan (US$280,000) for bribery.
At the start of the month, Beijing’s ecological and environmental inspection team criticised the Haixi government for failing to tackle serious problems that were harming the grasslands surrounding the salt lakes in the Qaidam Basin.
In November 2011, Li was transferred to the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, serving as director of its organisation department.
He was then transferred to Xinjiang, serving as deputy secretary and secretary of the education works committee in 2016, when the regional government started an overhaul of Uygur-language textbooks and purge of officials in the education sector.
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The court ruled that the textbooks had incited people to carry out a series of violent and sometimes deadly attacks in Xinjiang between 2009 and 2014. Close to 200 people were killed in the 2009 riots in Urumqi, the regional capital.
