Breaking rank: military graft no longer taboo topic in China
In scenes unimaginable before, PLA delegates at the session in Beijing tell the media about the extent of corruption in the senior ranks
In a departure from previous years, military corruption is being discussed at the parliamentary sessions in Beijing, with several PLA delegates conducting high-profile media interviews describing examples of misconduct in striking detail.
Avoiding the topic completely would have been a challenge given the widening scope of the crackdown, which has claimed dozens of leading officers in recent months. On March 2, three days before the sessions opened, the defence ministry named 14 generals who were either under investigation or had been convicted of graft.
The list included Guo Zhenggang, deputy political commissar of Zhejiang's military command and son of former Central Military Commission (CMC) vice-chairman Guo Boxiong.
That announcement followed the release in mid-January of the names of 16 military officers put under investigation in 2014. This list included another former CMC vice-chairman, Xu Caihou, the biggest military "tiger" caught so far.
Yang Chunchang, a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) member and a former aide to Xu, told Phoenix Television that his former boss had built a corrupt culture within the army and there was a market price for every senior position.
Liu Jian, a retired major general and CPPCC member, pointed the finger at retired General Guo Boxiong , telling that "parents cannot escape their responsibility when their children are not educated well".
