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20/11/2013

Indian women in business: has the glass ceiling been shattered? – The New Silk Road, Stephenson Harwood

From: The New Silk Road, Nov 13 to Jan 14; Stephenson Harwood

http://f.datasrvr.com/fr1/413/26346/NSRissue17-interactivePDF-v15.pdf

India is a country of acute contrasts; and perhaps nowhere is the divide more pronounced than in the status of women. In terms of the big milestones, the country has a reputation for leapfrogging others – Indira Gandhi became the world’s second ever female prime minister way back in 1966 (pipped to post by Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka), and women have since served in multiple senior political roles.

They’ve also stormed ahead in the professions (notably medicine and law) and in the international corporate world. One might cite Indra Nooyi, who beat all comers to secure the top job at Pepsi-Co; ot her aptly named Padmasree Warrior, chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco Systems. Meanwhile, a generation of newly-empowered and highly-educated young women are going out to work in larger numbers than before.

Set against these achievements, however, is the increasingly troubling situation facing Indian women more broadly. A recent Reuters Trustlaw investigation – examining a wide variety of measures from male-to-female pay disparity, through female foeticide, to deaths in dowry disputes – ranked India  as the worst country in the G20 to be born female.

Assushma Kapoor, South Asia deputy director for UN Women sums up: “There are two Indias: one where we can see more equality and prosperity for women, but another where the vast majority of women are living with no choice, voice, or rights.”

Although more than two decades of economic liberalisation has opened up opportunities in progressive cities such as New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore, large parts of the country – particularly in the north – remain entrenched in feudalism. The upshot, according to The Economist, is that just 29 per cent of Indian women are currently in the workforce, compared with two-thirds of women in China.If deep-rooted changes in social attitudes are needed, who better to lead them than India’s companies? The willingness with which multinational companies (especially in the IT sector) have embraced the female graduates of India’s management schools is surely indicative of their quality. As well as Vanitha Narayan of IBM (profiled overleaf) the managing directors of both CapGemini India and Hewlett-Packard India are women. Female representation at the top of the banking profession is also much higher in India than many other countries.

The sectors in which women are currently thriving at senior levels – FMCG, retail, IT and retail banking – tend to be consumer-centric, says headhunter Ronesh Puri of Executive Access: reflecting the fact that household buying decisions are usually made by women and companies feel the need to ‘connect’. In more labour-intensive industries like mining, oil and gas, and aviation, women are still under-represented – as they are in the west – though that is beginning to change.

Indeed, demand for female directors at Indian companies across the board is growing at an estimated rate of about 10 per cent each year. That’s partly the result of new legislation mandating at least one board for certain classes of companies. But it’s also a response to the growing body of research suggesting a link between business growth and profitability, and gender diversity.Many women in corporate India might protest that there’s a long way to go. But the same is true in virtually every other developed nation. And one thing India is not short of is distinguished role models. Here we profile four inspirational women, who’ve made their mark across very different sectors.

Shubhalakshmi Panse

Chairman and managing director, Allahabad Bank

When Shubhalakshmi Panse’s became the first woman to lead India’s oldest bank last year, it marked the culmination of a near 40-year career at the financial coal-face. It almost never happened. Panse, 59, was pursuing a doctorate in embryology at Pune University when she stumbled across a recruitment advert from the state-owned Bank of Maharashtra. She took the qualifying exams “just for fun”. Having successfully climbed the professional ladder, Panse made the most of a sabbatical in the US in the early 1990s, completing a three-year MBA in twelve months flat before returning to India. The sizeable challenge she was hired to tackle at Allahabad Bank was to turn round the struggling institution in a year, ahead of her retirement next January. Panse admits “networking” isn’t her forte. She credits her success to her work ethic (“my commitment has always been 200 per cent”); and her parents. “We were raised as independent individuals. My mother would say ‘you can do it’.

Ishita Swarup

Founder, Orion Dialog and 99.labels.com

Ishita Swarup knew from an early age that she wanted to do “something of my own” rather than get stuck in “the cog in the wheel syndrome”. After completing her MBA, she joined Cadbury’s Indian brand management team, but stayed in the corporate cocoon just three years before starting the online phone marketing firm, Orion Dialog, in 1994 aged 27. The firm, which numbered Citibank among early clients, caught the rising tide of business process outsourcing. In 2004, Swarup exited in style: selling out to Aegis BPO (part of the Essar group). Still, she’s had much a choppier time with her second big venture, the ecommerce outfit 99.labels.com. Launched in 2009, the site was India’s first ‘flash sales’ shopping portal. But a proliferation of ‘me too’ competition and profitability concerns have dogged the firm and, in May, a big investor pulled out. Swarup hasn’t given up. She’s rejigging the business model and looking for new backers. “Seeing a venture take shape from idea to reality, and then taking it to a growth level, motivates me,” she says. “Making mistakes is part of that process.”

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Founder, Biocon

India’s wealthiest self-made woman started Biocon aged 25 in 1978, out of the garage of a rented house with the bare minimum of capital because she could not get financial backing. The decision to strike out on her own – becoming India’s first biotech entrepreneur – was taken almost by default. She had hoped to get a job at Vijay Mallya’s United Breweries, but was shocked to hear that male colleagues wouldn’t accept her. “That’s when the hard fact hit me. There is a gender bias.” Biocon began life as an enzyme specialist, before moving whole sale into the lucrative bio-pharma sector in the late 1990s, ahead of the great ‘off patent’ bonanza. IN 2004, Mazumdar-Shaw too the company public, Now 60 and worth US$625 million, according to Forbes, she lives in an estate outside Bangalore. “You could be in California”, she said last year. “Then you step outside and see poverty. That’s not a nice feeling.” She has pledged to five away three-quarters of her wealth.

Vanitha Narayanan

Managing director, IBM India

In contrast, one woman who has thrived on corporate life is Vanitha Narayanan, an IBM ‘lifer’ who became responsible this year for all Big Blue’s operations in India and South Asia – one of the company’s fastest-growing regions. With 150,000 people on the payroll, IBM is the largest multinational employer in India. Naraythan, a graduate of the University of Madras, cheerfully admits that, apart from a brief stint in a department store, “IBM is my only job”. She joined the company’s US telecoms group as a trainee after taking an MBA at the University of Houston, and made her name working with just one client, the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. “It helped me lay a foundation – you respect the industry of your client, and sometimes the client is your best teacher.” That certainly proved true in her case. She went on to become a global vice-president of IBM’s telecom solutions, and in 2006 moved to China to run the Asia Pacific Unit. At 54, Narayanan is modest about her achievements, preferring the word “influence” to power. “She’s no pushover,” says a colleague. “But she can build trust very easily”.

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Posted in Banking, Culture, Economics, Gender imbalance, Gender issues, Good news, India alert, IT, Pharma, poverty, Retail, Social & cultural, Technology, wealth, Women's rights | Leave a Comment »

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19/11/2013

China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide | Reuters

China will ease family planning restrictions nationwide, the government said on Friday, allowing millions of families to have two children in the country\’s most significant liberalization of its strict one-child policy in about three decades.

A mother pushes her daughter on a swing in Beijing April 3, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Lee

Couples in which one parent is an only child will now be able to have a second child, one of the highlights of a sweeping raft of reforms announced three days after the ruling Communist Party ended a meeting that mapped out policy for the next decade.

The plan to ease the policy was envisioned by the government about five years ago as officials worried that the strict controls were undermining economic growth and contributing to a rapidly ageing population the country had no hope of supporting financially.

A growing number of scholars had long urged the government to reform the policy, introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth spiraling out of control, but now regarded by many experts as outdated and harmful to the economy.

While the easing of the controls will not have a substantial demographic impact in the world\’s most populous nation, it could pave the way for the abolition of the policy.

\”The demographic significance is minimal but the political significance is substantial,\” said Wang Feng, a sociology professor at Fudan University specializing in China\’s demographics, before the announcement.

\”This is one of the most urgent policy changes that we\’ve been awaiting for years. What this will mean is a very speedy abolishment of the one-child policy.\”

In the 1980s, the government allowed rural families with a girl to have two children, Wang said. \”Ever since the \’80s, there\’s been nothing as clear as this,\” he said.

Wang Guangzhou, a demographer from top government think-tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, estimated the new policy would affect 30 million women of child-bearing age In a country which has nearly 1.4 billion people.

Although it is known internationally as the one-child policy, China\’s rules governing family planning are more complicated. Under current rules, urban couples are permitted a second child if both parents do not have siblings and rural couples are allowed to have two children if their first-born is a girl.

There are numerous other exceptions as well, including looser rules for ethnic minorities and allowing parents who are themselves only children to have two children at most.

Any couple violating the policy has to pay a large fine.

The one-child policy covers 63 per cent of the country\’s population and Beijing says it has averted 400 million births since 1980.

Many analysts say the one-child policy has shrunk China\’s labor pool, hurting economic growth. For the first time in decades the working age population fell in 2012, and China could be the first country in the world to get old before it gets rich.

\”It\’s not a huge reform, there have been small adjustments all along,\” said Liang Zhongtang, a demographer from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

\”I am just worried that they will make no further adjustments for a very long time after they\’ve made this one.\”

Tian Xueyuan, a retired family planning scholar who helped draft the original one-child policy, told Reuters the rules were only meant to last about 25 years.

\”They could have implemented this policy several years ago,\” he said.

Numerous studies have shown the detrimental effects of the one-child policy. China\’s labor force, at about 930 million, will start declining in 2025 at a rate of about 10 million a year, projections show. Meanwhile, its elderly population will hit 360 million by 2030, from about 200 million today.

A skewed gender ratio is another consequence.

Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons. Many families abort female fetuses or abandon baby girls to ensure their only child is a son. About 118 boys are born for every 100 girls, against a global average of 103-107 boys per 100 girls.

Family planning officials have been known to compel women to have abortions to meet birth-rate targets.

Still, the adjustment is likely to be popular.

Zhang Yuanyuan, who has a one-year-old son, said she had already decided to have one more child before the new policy and was willing to pay the fine.

\”We are very, very happy about this new policy,\” Zhang told Reuters.

via China to ease decades-old one-child policy nationwide | Reuters.

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12/11/2013

China in numbers: secondhand view with salutary warning | The Times

3,000km . . . is the combined length of bargain-price underpants (if laid end-to-end) sold on Chinese websites between midnight on Sunday and 1am on Monday morning. If all the cut-price bras sold in the same period were piled on top of one another, the resulting pillar of lingerie would be three times the height of Mount Everest.

In those first, financially incontinent 60 minutes of Monday morning, China’s largest handler of online payments took 25 million orders with a combined value of 6.7 billion yuan (£686 million). About 340,000 of those orders were placed in the first minute. It was as if the world were about to end and China suddenly decided that the only hope of salvation lay in half-price knickers.

Astounding numbers of this sort were in plentiful supply on Monday as China delighted in the mad calculus of consumerism. It looks heartily encouraging, but appearances are deceptive. The cause of the online shopping frenzy was a deluge of sales promotions timed to coincide with “Singles Day” — a magnificently contrived “festival” prompted by the date 11.11. The whole thing was invented only four years ago.

Every online retailer in China (and there are an awful lot of them) was slashing prices as part of the fun. By mid-afternoon of Singles Day, the Alibaba online portal said that its sales promotions had generated more than ten billion yuan. That is already more than total online sales in the United States last year on “Black Friday”, the shopping day that follows Thanksgiving and historically is the biggest day for retail in the American calendar.

The temptation is to treat Singles Day as a bellwether, both of the general strength of online retail and of the ability of China’s nascent consumer economy to concoct its own events from thin air and convince people the best way of celebrating them is by shopping.

The reality, though, is less cut and dried. Taobao, the online shopping mall that enjoyed such fantastic sales on Monday, has another internet retail division that is telling a rather different story. For some months now, various courts in China have created online stores on Taobao to conduct what they call “judicial auctions” — sales of the various goods seized by the courts in criminal cases. The Government’s crackdown on corruption, now almost a year old, has swollen the items seized very significantly.

The auction site for the city of Wenzhou alone runs to more than 100 pages of items, including large vintage wine collections, mobile phones, office buildings, wedding rings, watches and even buses. Overwhelmingly, though, the items under the hammer are residential property, mostly medium to high-end flats. Activity in Wenzhou has always been seen as a weather vane for Chinese property prices and the signals are not encouraging.

The flats go on sale on the judicial auction sites with an estimated reserve price and, because the courts want a sale, that price tends to be at a decent discount to the prevailing market price. An additional appeal is that there is also no commission charged.

Yet many do not make the reserve price. Out of a batch of 157 auctions conducted by the Luchent District Court in Wenzhou, 72 fell through because there was no bid at all. Local property agents are starting to get very twitchy over what Taobao is telling them about the secondhand market.

Discounts may work for underpants, but they do not appear to do so for second-hand property. Chinese are still buying newly built apartments with gusto, on the assumption that eventually the resale market will be robust: the auctions seem to be sounding an alarm over that assumption.

via China in numbers: secondhand view with salutary warning | The Times.

Posted in Affluence, China alert, corruption, Economics, online sales, real estate | Leave a Comment »

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09/11/2013

Chinese tourists: Mind your manners | The Economist

IT’S HARD being a Chinese tourist. Reviled for bad behaviour one day and ripped off by everyone from taxi drivers to pickpockets the next, China’s newly minted travelling classes are having a tough year.

In typical fashion, the Chinese government appears intent on regulating away some of that pain. On October 1st China’s tourism industry came under a new set of rules, most intended to curb corruption in domestic travel and ease the burden on guides, groups and tourists travelling within the country. The law includes at least one clause that seems to have been inspired by a series of incidents that have revealed the apparently bad manners of Chinese tourists, on the mainland and overseas.

The number of Chinese travelling at leisure, both domestically and abroad, has grown tremendously in recent years, boosted by rising incomes, a less restrictive passport regime and softer limits on spending. The new tourism law aims to help the tourists themselves, mainly by preventing practices like the forced-march shopping excursions that are often led by ill-paid tour guides. The law also provides helpful advice to the many millions of mainland Chinese who do their pleasure-seeking abroad.

Section 13 advises Chinese tourists to behave themselves wherever they go in the world. The article is a nod to high-profile embarrassments like the one that a teenager caused by carving his mark—“Ding Jinhao was here”—into an ancient wall in the Egyptian ruins at Luxor earlier this year. Chinese tourists have drawn scorn after posting online snapshots of themselves hunting and devouring endangered sea clams in the Paracel islands, and others have produced fake marriage papers at resorts in the Maldives, in order to take advantage of free dinners. (Closer to home, the new law might have given pause to the group of Chinese tourists on Hainan island who inadvertently killed a stranded dolphin by using it as a prop in group portraits.) Spitting, shouting and sloppy bathroom etiquette have made the Chinese look like the world’s rudest new tourists, from London to Taipei and beyond.

A vice-premier, Wang Yang, made note of the problem a few months ago, calling on his countrymen to watch their manners when travelling abroad. The new regulations add legal force to his plea.

“Tourists shall respect public order and social morality in tourism activities, respect the local customs, cultural traditions and religious beliefs, take care of tourism resources, protect the ecological environment and respect the norms of civilised tourist behaviours,” as Section 13 instructs.

Although it might be difficult to regulate such sensitive matters by fiat, this kind of nudge can have an impact in China. These few headline-grabbing humiliations, along with an ongoing campaign that mainland visitors face in Hong Kong, have made many relatively seasoned Chinese travellers more careful about the way they comport themselves abroad. In Paris, ever a favourite destination for Chinese tourists and shoppers, polite French-speaking Chinese guides shepherd their flocks through the sites, apologising when any of their charges bumps into others.

via Chinese tourists: Mind your manners | The Economist.

Posted in Affluence, bad behaviour, China alert, Economics, Social & cultural, Tourism, tourist | Leave a Comment »

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09/11/2013

Big Money Behind Chinese Soccer Strategy – China Real Time Report – WSJ

If money can buy success in the world of sport, then in China, it matters greatly to whom it belongs.

As China stands on the cusp of its first taste of international soccer success, with Guangzhou Evergrande taking on FC Seoul in the final of the Asian Champions League on Saturday night, it’s clear that without huge sums of money, this may never have been possible. And not just any money, but real estate money.

As preparations took place outside Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou’s business district on Saturday morning, the clout and wealth of the local team’s owner, Evergrande Real Estate Group, was plain to see. Rows of trucks bearing the name “Evergrande Music” lined up outside the stadium in preparation for huge post-match bash. With a two-goal advantage after a 2-2 draw in Seoul last month (away goals count for more), Evergrande are the favorites to win Saturday night’s match.

Guangzhou-based Evergrande is owned by Xu Jiayin, who according to the latest Hurun Report rich list has a net worth of $7.7 billion. He also has political clout, as a member of the country’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

He bought the disgraced Guangzhou Pharmaceutical club in 2010 for 100 million yuan ($16.4 million), after the team was relegated over a match-fixing scandal dating back to 2006. After that, he signed China’s national team captain Zheng Zhi, as well as three players from South America.

“There will be no chance for a state-owned company to compete against private real estate money,” said sports columnist Yan Qiang.

China’s real estate developers may not necessarily be the biggest or most profitable companies in the country, especially compared to state-owned behemoths. But the industry is a source of some of the more colorful and freewheeling businesspeople — a number of whom are willing to take risks on sports teams for the prestige they bring.

In the 2013 Chinese Super League season, state-backed Shandong Luneng Taishan placed second but lagged far behind Evergrande in points. Beijing Guoan, backed by state-owned conglomerate Citic Group, placed third. Real estate money came into play for Guizhou Renhe which ranked fourth. The team received large sums of money from developer Renhe Commercial Holdings Co. Ltd. in 2010, after the team, which was then based in Shaanxi province, flirted with relegation to the second division.

Other teams in the Super League propped up by real estate interests include Guangzhou R&F, which finished 6th this year and Hangzhou Greentown, which finished 12th.

via Big Money Behind Chinese Soccer Strategy – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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09/11/2013

China army says roots out ‘illicit’ apartments in graft fight | Reuters

Even the PLA is not immune to anti-corruption campaign.  This means Xi and Li have a stronger grip of power than some of their recent predecessors.

“China\’s People\’s Liberation Army has discovered in a corruption probe that its troops \”illicitly kept\” more than 8,000 apartments and 25,000 vehicles, state media said on Tuesday.

But those who benefitted will apparently escape punishment and only have to give them up.

President Xi Jinping, who as chairman of the Central Military Commission is also China\’s top military official, has called corruption a threat to the Communist Party\’s very survival, and vowed pursue powerful \”tigers\” as well as lowly \”flies\”.

China intensified a crackdown on rampant corruption in the military in the late 1990s, banning the PLA from engaging in business. But graft has intensified in recent years due to a lack of transparency and checks and balances.

The PLA said its probe had \”uncovered more than 8,100 apartments and more than 25,000 vehicles kept illicitly by its personnel\”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

There was, however, no mention of punishment.

\”Various PLA units have promised to return illegal housing and eliminate secretaries that were not allowed; they have also vowed to strictly regulate the use of military vehicles,\” Xinhua said.

\”PLA units have held criticism and self-criticism meetings and submitted reports to echo a Communist Party of China drive to clean up undesirable work styles such as … bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance.\””

via China army says roots out ‘illicit’ apartments in graft fight | Reuters.

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08/11/2013

Why banking mints the most women CEOs in India – Economic Times

As Arundhati Bhattacharya gets set to take charge as the chairperson of the country\’s largest bank State Bank of India (SBI), she looks likely to join the steadily expanding club of women currently holding the top job in Indian banks.

Bhattacharya will be the latest entrant, joining the likes of Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO of ICICI Bank; Shikha Sharma, MD and CEO, Axis Bank; Naina Lal Kidwai, country head, HSBC; Kaku Nakhate, president and country head (India), Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Vijayalakshmi Iyer, CMD, Bank of India; Archana Bhargava, CMD, United Bank of India and Shubhalakshmi Panse, CMD of Allahabad Bank.

via Why banking mints the most women CEOs in India – Economic Times.

Posted in Banking, Economics, Gender imbalance, Gender issues, India alert, Social & cultural, Women's rights | 1 Comment »

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08/11/2013

India negotiating to bring back stolen antiques: ASI – India Insight: Reuters

India plans to step up its efforts to bring back Indian artefacts from other countries after the recent repatriation of a 10th century “Yogini” stone sculpture from Paris.

Illegal trade in paintings, sculptures and other artefacts is one of the world’s most profitable criminal enterprises, estimated at $6 billion a year, according to Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based advocacy group. India is one of the biggest targets for smugglers, who ship stolen antiques and other culturally important artefacts abroad to sell to art dealers and museums.

India Insight spoke to R.S. Fonia, Director (Antiquity) at the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), about the black market for Indian artefacts and what the ASI is doing to bring Indian antiques back home. This interview has been lightly edited.

Are you seeing an increase or decrease in smuggling of Indian artefacts?

Awareness has increased about the antiquities, so it has decreased. Certainly there is decline of smuggling.

How big is the market for smuggled Indian artefacts?

We don’t have figures.

What initiatives are you taking to bring back Indian artefacts from abroad?

We are trying hard. That’s why we have retrieved 16-17 artefacts from abroad. We are directly interacting with all concerned agencies, but it takes some time. There are so many processes involved.

via India Insight.

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04/11/2013

Florentijn Hofman’s Big Yellow Duck Rakes In $33 Million While on Display in Beijing – China Real Time Report – WSJ

It was a goose that laid golden eggs, according to Aesop. But with a little help from Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, China appears to have changed the storyline.

Anyone living in or paying attention to China in the past six months will be familiar – maybe too familiar – with Mr. Hofman’s big yellow duck. Since May, multiple versions of the inflatable plastic creation, some authorized and some not, have made appearances in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Beijing, and countless malls and souvenir stands across Asia. There’s even been an online commemoration of a certain political anniversary.

The bird’s ubiquity has given rise to an ever-growing population of duck haters. But it has proven to be such a crowd-pleaser in Beijing that officials had to work hard to count all the money it brought in.

Mr. Hofman signed rubber ducks for fans during a farewell ceremony at the Summer Palace.

In just 52 days, more than 3 million people flocked to see the 18-meter tall plastic duck at the Summer Palace and the Garden Expo, according to organizers. Some 70,000 showed up on the last day to say goodbye to their plastic friend, local media reported. And the outsized installation didn’t have to do anything besides float and look photogenic.

When an earthquake struck Taiwan on Thursday, one of Mr. Hofman’s mammoth bath toys stationed in Taoyuan proved to be – well, a sitting duck. Suddenly he had the wind knocked out of him, and when workers tried to reinflate him, his tail-end exploded. A local councilor reportedly called for a moment of silence, though others rejoiced.

Sailing was smoother in Beijing. The yellow plastic fantastic brought in an estimated of 200 million yuan ($33 million) at its two venues in the Chinese capital. Maybe not everyone had gone specifically to see it, but having it there certainly didn’t hurt. At the Summer Palace, there were two million visitors over the duck-viewing period, up 30% from a year ago.

The combined tally of cash brought in didn’t include the 7 million yuan from sales of plastic duck spin-off toys that can fit in your bathtub and don’t need a private lake to display them.

“We were happy with the results,” said Sun Qun, who organized the shows. So was the government, which partnered with him on the duck extravaganza.

Financial details of the deal with the Dutch creator weren’t disclosed.

via Florentijn Hofman’s Big Yellow Duck Rakes In $33 Million While on Display in Beijing – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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04/11/2013

China sends graft busters to more provinces, government departments | Reuters

As the anti-corruption campaign gathers pace, one cannot but be reminded of the Joe McCarthy ‘red under every bed’ anti-communist ‘witch hunt’ of the 50s in the US. See – http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/senatorjosephmccarthy.asp.  

The main difference, I suppose, is that there were far fewer ‘commies’ than McCarthy suspected; but one wonders if there will be far more corrupt officials than the Chinese Watchdog suspects.

“China has sent anti-corruption investigators to six more provinces and four government departments, the Chinese Communist Party\’s corruption watchdog said on Monday, in the government\’s latest move to tackle graft.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has dispatched inspectors to government departments that include official news agency Xinhua and the Commerce Ministry, the watchdog said in a statement on its website.

Other targets include the southern economic powerhouse of Guangdong, coal-rich Shanxi and the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Since taking office in March, Chinese President Xi Jinping has called corruption a threat to the ruling Communist Party\’s survival and vowed to go after powerful \”tigers\” as well as lowly \”flies\”.

Authorities have already announced the investigation or arrest of a handful of senior officials. Among them, former executives from oil giant PetroChina are being investigated in what appears to be the biggest graft probe into a state-run firm in years. These investigations are unrelated to this new round of probes, or the previous one, which began in May.

The May probes, which lasted through the summer and reported back in September, targeted five regions and five departments, including the poor southern province of Guizhou, the southeastern province of Jiangxi and coal-rich Inner Mongolia, as well as the state-owned China Grain Reserves Corporation and the China Publishing Group Corp.

The party has so far given few details of the outcome of the first round of investigations, in line with its secretive nature, though the anti-corruption watchdog publishes website reports of a steady stream of minor officials being probed.

Speaking to officials in October ahead of this new round of probes, Wang Qishan, the head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, urged colleagues to spare no effort in rooting out corruption.”

via China sends graft busters to more provinces, government departments | Reuters.

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