The Communist Party’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign appears to have Chinese state-owned company executives spooked: a range of officials that head up multibillion dollar behemoths have taken to the press recently to boast about their voluntary salary reductions, in an apparent attempt to stop antigraft investigators from coming knocking.
In February, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Party’s anti-corruption arm, announced that it had targeted 26 state-owned companies for a new round of inspection, since the campaign started in 2010.
In some cases, such as with China Unicom, one of the largest telecommunications firms in China, investigators took over a floor of the building and poured through the company’s books. They also solicited confessions from underlings, discovering dirt on the bosses that were later unceremoniously sacked from the company and expelled from the Communist Party. The regime often uses Party members to head up state companies, and rotates them on a regular basis.
