Fallen Chinese general facing graft charges dies

The highest-ranking Chinese military officer to fall under President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive has died of cancer, official media reported Monday.
Xu Caihou rose to become the second most senior officer in the 2.3 million-strong People's Liberation Army as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, and a member of the Communist Party's 25-strong Politburo.
He retired from the military in 2013, but was put under investigation last year and later expelled from the ruling party and handed to judicial authorities for prosecution, with his general's rank revoked.
Xu died of bladder cancer on Sunday, the official news agency Xinhua said in a brief dispatch. He was 71.
His illness had been previously reported, and his death forestalls the possibility of a lurid trial.
"Xu was found taking advantage of his position to assist the promotion of other people, accepting (a) huge amount of bribes personally and through his family," Xinhua said.
Military prosecutors would take no further action against him, but will "deal with his illegal gains according to law", it cited a statement from the military procuratorate as saying.
Since coming to power more than two years ago Xi has sought to impose himself on China's military, which has been one of the targets of his wide-ranging anti-corruption drive.
The deputy Communist chief of Yunnan province, Qiu He, was put under investigation at the weekend, the ruling party's internal watchdog said after the close of the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp parliament.
Xu was the highest-ranking military "tiger" to be brought down by the campaign, although critics say that without systemic reforms it risks being used for political faction-fighting.
The founding father of Communist China, Mao Zedong said that power comes from the barrel of a gun, and senior officials and state-run media frequently exhort the military to follow the Party's leadership, while officers pledge to do so.
As well as being the world's largest active military, a vast network of businesses are linked to China's armed forces, with a web of connections so extensive that academics have described it as "PLA Inc".
Beijing unveiled the latest annual double-digit increase in its military budget earlier this month, taking the official figure to 887 billion yuan ($142 billion), although analysts believe spending is significantly higher than publicised.
Experts say the financial spike has brought with it more opportunities for corruption within the ranks.
- No leniency -
Since Xu's fall, there have been multiple reports of his wrongdoing, including claims of the sale of promotions for tens of millions of yuan.
One military commander offered Xu 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) for a posting, only to be outbid by another who offered 20 million ($3.2 million), according to an interview last week by Phoenix TV with several military officials, including one who was an assistant to Xu.
A magazine linked to the broadcaster reported last year that when an anti-graft team investigated the basement of Xu's 2,000-square-metre mansion in central Beijing, they discovered "a mountain of cash", jewels, paintings and antiques.
"The whole party and the whole military must fully understand the long-term nature, complexity and arduousness of the anti-corruption fight," the Politburo said in its June statement announcing Xu's ouster from the party.
In a commentary last October, the PLA Daily newspaper hailed the authorities' move to investigate Xu in spite of his illness.
"The Central Military Commission will not be lenient in its enforcement of military regulations," it wrote.
Questions over whether the PLA should become an army of the country rather than an army of the party -- so-called "nationalisation" -- have mounted in recent years, but Xi made clear the change was off the agenda last November.
"We must face up to the outstanding issues ... in building up the military, especially on our political thinking," he told a two-day meeting in Gutian, a former revolutionary base where Mao imposed himself on the party's "Fourth Army" in 1929.