Nomenclature
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2010
- Messages
- 961
- Reaction score
- 0
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/world/asia/13china.html?_r=2
A lot of theories are floating around. It's probably related to a certain company getting a ridiculous share of contracts from the Ministry.
BEIJING The railway minister of China, Liu Zhijun, has been removed from the top post in the ministry because he is being investigated for corruption, according to a report on Saturday by Xinhua, the state news agency. Mr. Liu is the most senior Chinese official to come under such investigation in years.
The inquiry raises questions about Chinas deep investment in high-speed railways, a vast nationwide initiative that has been a favorite project of Mr. Liu, who has spent his entire career in the ministry.
Mr. Liu, 58, is being investigated for severe violation of discipline, according to the Xinhua report, which cited the Communist Partys discipline watchdog. The report did not give details on the exact infractions.
Before Mr. Liu, perhaps the most prominent official to be felled on corruption charges was Chen Liangyu, the party boss of Shanghai and an ally of Jiang Zemin, the former president of China; Mr. Chen was dismissed from his Shanghai post in 2006 and sentenced in 2008 to 18 years in prison.
Mr. Lius family has been dogged by charges of abuse of power. In April 2006, Mr. Lius younger brother, Liu Zhixiang, was given a suspended death sentence by a court in Hubei Province for hiring people to kill a man who had revealed that he was a corrupt official. The brother, who was the head of the railways bureau in the city of Wuhan, was also convicted of taking bribes and embezzling public funds and property worth more than $5 million over a nine-year period.
The elder Mr. Liu had been in his job since 2003. Mr. Liu has been removed from the post of party chief, the most senior position in the ministry, and temporarily replaced with Sheng Guangzu, 62, head of the general administration of customs, Xinhua reported.
According to an official biography, Mr. Liu was born in Hubei Province in 1953 and joined the Communist Party at age 20. He graduated from the Party School in 1998 after majoring in Marxist philosophy. He served separate stints as director of the railway bureaus in Henan Province and Liaoning Province before moving into the central railway bureaucracy in Beijing.
A total of 146,517 officials were punished for disciplinary violations in 2010, Xinhua reported. Of those, 5,098 were officials at the county level or above, and 804 of them were prosecuted.
The railway ministry employs 2.5 million people across China and commands a vast budget. The largest annual mass movement of people in the world takes place on Chinese trains during the Lunar New Year holiday, when people all across the country return home to reunite with their families. But this is also the time when corruption in the railway industry becomes the most obvious large numbers of tickets somehow end up in the hands of scalpers, and some people are forced to pay well above the original price to go home.
Mr. Liu personally championed the explosion in high-speed rail construction, the scale of which has overshadowed all such projects in the United States. In September 2009, Zhang Shuguang, the deputy chief engineer of the railway ministry, said in a speech that the government planned 42 lines by 2012, with 5,000 miles of track for passenger trains that travel at 215 miles per hour and 3,000 miles of track for passenger and fast freight trains traveling at 155 miles per hour. But with the slowdown of the stimulus money that the government announced in 2008 to combat the effects of the global financial crisis, some high-speed lines might not be finished until 2013 or 2014, transportation experts say.
The most impressive operational line is the one from the southern provincial capital of Guangzhou to the interior metropolis of Wuhan. The train has the worlds fastest average speed, traversing 664 miles in a little over three hours.
A lot of theories are floating around. It's probably related to a certain company getting a ridiculous share of contracts from the Ministry.
was placed under investigation last month. Her company got the contract of developing and building noise barriers for the high-speed rail systems. Rumors are linking Ding and Liu's investigations.
