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https://scmp.com/news/china/article/1694456/china-launches-massive-suicide-survey-after-party-officials-deaths-during
China

China launches massive suicide survey after party officials’ deaths during graft crackdown

President Xi Jinping is targeting corruption in state enterprises. Photo: Reuters

The Chinese Communist Party has launched a massive suicide investigation, asking cadres across the nation to uncover “unnatural deaths” in the two years that President Xi Jinping has implemented his corruption crackdown.

The party put out notices on government websites asking officials to report about such deaths – which by definition include murders, accidents and executions, but by the party’s instructions are more focused on those that have been deemed suicides between December 2012 and last year.

The period coincides with the anti-graft drive launched by President Xi Jinping soon after he became general secretary of the party in late 2012. The cleaning-up of party rot, which includes the People’s Liberation Army, has resulted in around 200,000 officials being disciplined.

“There’s a growing number of official suicide cases reported over the past two years as the anti-corruption campaign intensified,” said Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

Zhang said those officials driven to suicide could possibly be protecting their superiors or family members from the agony of a corruption investigation.

Under the suicide investigation, cadres are instructed to fill in forms, printed with eight-column charts, including the name, sex, rank and work unit of the deceased, along with the time and cause of death.

They are instructed to choose among a list of options to describe the location, method of death of the suicides and whether the deceased were under corruption investigation at the time of death, along with the status of the investigation when the death occurred.
The survey is more focused on the deaths that have been deemed suicides.
The survey is more focused on the deaths that have been deemed suicides.

The survey lists causes of death such as hanging, drowning, jumping under a train, leaping off a building and wrist-cutting.

Officials must also fill out a section that lists the “reasons for suicide”, including involvement in illegal activities, psychological disorders, work pressure and family disputes.

The paper also lists possible locations for the deaths including office building, house of detention, bridge and the discipline inspection office. The discipline inspection office is a unit of China’s graf watchdog.

The party’s latest move could be a step in compiling statistics on suicides in government. There are no publicly available official figures for the phenomenon, apart from media reports of such cases.

The South China Morning Post reported in November that the deputy commissar of the navy, Vice-Admiral Ma Faxiang, was believed to have committed suicide less than three months after another senior officer fell from a building at a naval complex in Beijing.

Early this month, Yang Weize, former party secretary of coastal city of Nanjing, was reported attempting to jump from the window of his office building when approached by discipline inspection officials. He was quickly subdued and had been placed under corruption investigation ever since.

The Sichuan-based corruption-watch biweekly Honesty Outlook, this month said at least 40 officials killed themselves last year – noticeably more than any other year in the past three decades.

Cpcnews.com, the Communist Party’s official news portal, earlier said corrupt officials resort to committing suicide in order to save their family members or interest group from continuing investigations.