A SENIOR provincial official has been removed from his post because of “suspected serious disciplinary violations,” Xinhua reported Saturday, making him the latest target in a crackdown on corruption.

    Guo Youming, a vice governor of the central province of Hubei, was removed from his post after China’s corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), announced a probe of Guo last week.

    The Xinhua report cited the Party’s central organization department but gave no further details. The term “discipline violations” is generally used to denote corruption.

    Guo’s dismissal came a day after China launched a pilot program to make new officials disclose their assets as part of an anti-graft campaign, a step critical to weeding out official corruption.

    The government also announced last week that two other officials were being probed over graft allegations.

    Xu Jie, a deputy head of the national petitions office, has been sacked for suspected graft issues, while Cai Rongsheng, head of admissions at Beijing’s prestigious Renmin University of China, is under investigation in a probe State media said was related to “corruption cases involving large amounts of money.”

    President Xi Jinping has made fighting corruption a top theme of his new administration, vowing to pursue high-flying “tigers” as well as lowly “flies” to assuage anger over corruption and restore faith in the Party.

    Guo is a long-time official in Hubei, where he served in the water management bureau and as Party secretary in Yichang City, near the US$59-billion Three Gorges Dam project.

    His official biography said he was in charge of “follow-up work” on the dam, as well as elements of the North-South Water Transfer Project, which aims to divert river water to the industrialized north.

    Authorities have already announced the investigation or arrest of a handful of senior officials, among them former officials of oil giant PetroChina, in what appears to be the biggest graft probe into a State-run firm in years.

    In May, Liu Tienan, the former deputy head of China’s top planning agency, was removed from his post after accusations of corruption against him appeared online. A criminal investigation began in August. (SD-Agencies)