Hebei province head investigated for corruption

The head of a major Chinese province and former aide to disgraced official Zhou Yongkang has been placed under investigation as part of a widening probe into alleged corruption.
Hebei province Communist Party head Zhou Benshun is suspected of “severe violations of discipline and the law,” the party’s anti-graft watchdog said in a brief statement issued late Friday.
No details were given, although the term is a standard euphemism for corruption.
Zhou is the first serving provincial chief to fall in a crackdown on corruption at all levels of government by President Xi Jinping that’s seen as also targeting threats to Xi’s power.
Zhou formerly held key positions in the central government’s Politics and Law Commission headed by Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee who was sentenced to life in prison last month on charges that he took 130 million yuan (USD21 million) in bribes and caused 1.4 billion yuan ($229 million) in losses of public money.
The two Zhous are not believed to be related.
In a further step in the anti-corruption campaign, former President Hu Jintao’s top aide was arrested last week on corruption charges, stripped of his party membership and removed from all government positions.
The move came seven months after Hu’s former aide Ling Jihua was placed under internal investigation for disciplinary violations. AP

Court sentences 5 on charges of spreading cult teachings

A court in northeast China sentenced five people to prison Saturday for spreading the teachings of a banned religious group that’s been linked to a killing of a woman in a McDonald’s restaurant last year.
The Intermediate Court in the city of Panjin said the five were sentenced to two to three years for undermining the implementation of the law, recruiting believers and propagating the group, called Quannengshen.
Members of the sect, whose name translates roughly as “all-powerful spirit,” were sentenced for killing a woman in May 2014 after she refused to give her phone number to the suspects, who were trying to recruit new members.
The group believes Jesus has been resurrected as a Chinese woman, and it has been officially banned along with 13 other sects of various types.
Following last year’s incident, authorities announced the roundup of hundreds of alleged cult members. The killing was caught on security camera footage and shown repeatedly on state television, along with the trial proceedings, in which two members were sentenced to death.
China has struggled at times to control grass-roots religious movements based on Christian or Buddhist ideology, most notably the Falun Gong meditation movement, which attracted millions of adherents before being brutally repressed in 1999. AP