Society

Ministry's chief engineer under investigation

By Wang Huazhong and Wang Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-25 07:41

BEIJING - The Communist Party's discipline inspection body is investigating the chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for an alleged serious violation of discipline, a spokesman of the ministry told China Daily on Thursday.

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According to ministry spokesman Wang Lijian, the Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has recently taken away the chief engineer, Su Jinsheng, for investigation, without elaborating on charges or if anyone else was also involved.

However, another official with the ministry's publicity office, who only gave her surname as Zhang, said Su was "suspected of a serious violation of Party discipline" - which is usually law breaking as well.

The ministry's functions range from defining macro-level strategies and policies, allocating investments and central budgets, to outlining micro-level standards, management and inspection practices for the country's industries and information sectors.

According to media reports, the focus of the chief engineer's recent work was a February survey on the development of 3G - a new market growth driver - in China's major three telecommunication carriers.

The Beijing-based business portal, Caixin Online, reported that an unnamed insider of a telecommunication service provider said the probe on Su might be a continuation of earlier investigations into a group corruption case inside State-controlled China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier by the number of users.

Premier Wen Jiabao said in his annual work report this month that corruption poses the biggest threat to the country and, to wipe out the root cause of graft, the nation should pursue institutional reform.

Besides the expected reform, reshuffling government agencies and Party commissions is also foreseeable in 2012, when incumbents end their terms.

Central and local commissions for discipline inspection in China handed out discipline punishments on 146,517 Party members and forwarded 5,373 people to judiciary proceedings in 2010 - "rising, to some extent, from last year", according to official figures.

A publicity official with the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection refused to release any information related to Su's case to China Daily on Thursday.

Su made his last public appearance at a forum in Beijing on March 16, and he has not returned to work since the investigation began, ministry officials said.

Once made public, the Party inspection procedure would likely be followed with judicial proceedings.

By publication time, the introduction of "chief engineer" Su Jinsheng was still on the ministry's website.

Su was assigned to his current post in April 2009.

Before that, he was director of the telecommunication management bureau of the ministry from July 2008.

He also held senior administrative and Party roles in telecommunication authorities and in China Mobile.

Tuo Yannan contributed to this story.