A leading group was established yesterday by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) to audit senior officers in the army, according to a decision taken by the Central Military Commission (CMC).

 

Approximately 1,000 leading officers, including more than 100 at army and divisional levels, will be audited this year, according to sources at PLA headquarters.

 

One of the major tasks of the group is to curb corruption in a systematic way and ensure officers use their authority appropriately, the sources said.

 

The members of the leading group come from the PLA's four general departments that are responsible for general staff, politics, logistics and armaments.

 

The four departments should make joint efforts to take military auditing to a new level, said Liao Xilong, a CMC member, chief of the PLA General Logistics Department and head of the leading group.

 

Liao said in the coming five years the auditing would be conducted to see if there were any irregularities involving budgets, building projects, equipment procurement, investment, real estate work and profitable services. He urged leading officers at all levels to distribute and manage military resources lawfully, rationally and efficiently.

 

This year the PLA plans to audit a total of 983 leading officers, including 26 at army level, 135 at divisional and 822 at regimental. So far 639 of these officers have been audited. 

 

On July 1 a senior Chinese military official asked the armed forces to answer President Hu Jintao's call to fight corruption following the exposure of one of the country's most serious military scandals.

 

"All levels of military personnel should earnestly study President Hu's speech to raise the sense of responsibility of fulfilling our military's mission," said Xu Caihou, CMC vice chairman.

 

Hu stressed on June 30 that Party members should take effective measures and make painstaking efforts to combat corruption. The call came a day after the former deputy commander of the Navy of PLA, Wang Shouye, was expelled from China's national legislature for taking bribes and other irregularities. The 62-year-old Wang was also stripped of his naval post.

 

"Because of my involvement in economic crimes I have been stripped of the post of deputy navy commander and thus no longer have the qualification to be a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC). Please take me off the position," Wang said in his resignation letter dated March 29, 2006.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2006)