The fierce anti-graft campaign launched by China's new leaders is extending deeper into the country's economic activities as the top anti-graft watchdog has announced the investigation of Jiang Jiemin, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

The Party's discipline inspection commission announced on its website on Sunday that Jiang was being investigated for "serious discipline violations".

Jiang was elected as a member of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November and nominated as the head of the ministerial-level State assets regulator in March. The investigation makes him the first member of the 18th CPC Central Committee to be investigated and the first chairman of the regulatory body to face such a probe since the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission was established a decade ago.

Jiang was chairman of China National Petroleum Corporation, China's leading oil producer, for years before he was promoted to head the commission, and thus the announcement that he is to be investigated, which came just days after the anti-graft watchdog announced the investigations of four of CNPC's top executives, has been interpreted as the wielding of the anti-corruption sword over the State-owned colossus.

China's State-owned enterprises have played an essential role in promoting the country's economic and social development over the past decades. However, the lack of effective oversight has also created space for corruption. Liu Zhijun, former minister of railways, was sentenced to a suspended death penalty in July for bribery and abuse of power.

The overwhelming monopoly of SOEs in key areas, such as oil, telecommunications and railways, has also been denounced as causing low efficiency and blocking the entry of the vibrant private sector, and some of them have been heavily criticized for suffering enormous losses due to their lack of feasible and well-conceived plans for overseas acquisitions and expansion.

For example, due to its ambitious overseas expansion strategy, CNPC has expanded its business rapidly in recent years, but some of its overseas activities were never likely to be profitable. The oil giant has also been focus of public criticism for its monopoly of the domestic oil market and the losses of shareholding investors.

There is now serious public discontent at how SOEs are run.

President Xi Jinping has vowed the anti-corruption campaign will include both "tigers" and "flies", and Jiang's investigation should be the start of the country's steps to put hundreds of its SOEs under tight scrutiny and ferret out more corrupt SOE executives.

(China Daily USA 09/03/2013 page11)