China’s People’s Liberation Army audits spending in bid to root out crime
Thursday, 12 February, 2015, 12:32am
Angela Meng angela.meng@scmp.com
The review, part of Xi’s anti-waste crackdown, will look into expenditure over past two years
The People’s Liberation Army is launching a year-long retrospective audit to review military spending over the past two years to crack down on excessive behaviour in the world’s largest army. Army mouthpiece PLA Daily yesterday said the audit would focus on four things: pay orders of all military fund flows, schedules of disbursement, management of internal service venues, and details of spending for extra-budgetary funds. The report, which was on the daily’s front page, said the move was aimed at uncovering embezzlement, accounting fraud, stealing from private coffers and other wrongdoing so as to curb “deep-seated, unhealthy” tendencies in the military.News of the retrospective audit comes after the PLA’s top decision-making body, the Central Military Commission, in November took direct control of the army’s audit office, which was previously supervised by the General Logistics Department, in an effort to strengthen President Xi Jinping’s campaign to root out corruption in the army.
The General Logistics Department – which is also responsible for the army’s manufacturing wing, supply chain, transport, housing and medical services – came under scrutiny after its deputy chiefs, Gu Junshan and Liu Zheng, were charged with crimes including bribery and embezzlement late last year.
On the PLA Daily‘s front page yesterday was also a commentary highlighting various moves by Xi – who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission – to crack down on extravagance and embezzlement in the army.
These moves included revising finance management systems, regulating conferences and training, and other accounting reforms.
Last week, Zhang Yang, head of the army’s General Political Department, vowed to step up discipline in the military to improve its image sullied by the corruption case of former commission vice-chairman Xu Caihou . Xu had earlier been found guilty of accepting bribes and abusing his position to promote others.
But news of bad behaviour continued to affect the army’s image, the commentary said, raising recent incidents in which military personnel driving vehicles sporting PLA licences ran red lights at traffic junctions or tried to shirk responsibility in the event of an accident on the road.
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