BEIJING: The police chief of China’s Tianjin city is being investigated for corruption, authorities said, the third senior security official in the northern port to be targeted for graft in eight years.

Wu Changshun, director of the city’s public security bureau, is being investigated for “serious disciplinary and legal violations”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said.

The terms used by the CCDI on Sunday are commonly used to refer to corruption.

Wu is the latest official to fall in a wide-ranging graft crackdown launched by President Xi Jinping when he took office last year.

The high-profile campaign has been criticised in some quarters for a lack of transparency and for not introducing systemic reforms.

Previously, Wu’s predecessor Song Pingshun committed suicide in June 2007 after central government investigators launched a probe into numerous officials in Tianjin’s judicial departments.—AFP

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2014