REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BEIJING -- The highest-ranking Chinese military officer to fall under President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive has died of cancer, official media reported Monday (16/3).
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 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.
Critics say that without systemic reforms the campaign risks being used for factional political purposes, and Xu was the highest-ranking military "tiger" to be brought down by it.
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.
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.
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 which face us 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.
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