This might be the coda in China’s biggest case in President Xi Jinping’s three-year anti-corruption campaign.
A former deputy governor of Hainan province, Ji Wenlin, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption.
Ji was close to Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the ruling nine-man standing committee, who last year became the most senior official in the history of the People’s Republic to be convicted of corruption and related offenses. Zhou was given a life sentence.
The news of Ji’s sentence was published in Xinhua on Wednesday, the Communist Party-controlled news agency.
Xinhua said corruption investigators spotted $3.2 million in bribes Ji had taken as an official, including investments for several companies. The probe into Ji started back in spring 2014 and he is the latest of Zhou’s allies to be put in prison. Last October, it was Jiang Jiemin, who once oversaw the country’s state-owned companies and is now spending 16 years in jail for corruption.
Xi’s anticorruption campaign is one part house-cleaning for the Communist Party, one part political power struggle.
Zhou Yongkang and his clique were fierce political opponents of Xi. Now, they are marginalized and jailed.