China has further stepped up its anti-corruption drive in the provinces, cracking down on a large number of local officials for alleged election fraud.
A total of 454 members of the Liaoning Province people's assembly's 600 legislators were relieved from their positions following widespread allegations of vote-buying and bribery, Nikkei Asia reported. The sacking comes after the National People's Congress dismissed 45 high-ranking officials over the same issue.
Earlier this year, the Communist Party of China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) has sent an investigation team to look into the case. The investigation has led to the ouster of former Liaoning provincial Communist Party head Wang Min from the party itself.
Due to the large number of members dismissed from Liaoning's legislature, the NPC has approved the creation of an ad hoc panel to temporarily stand in for the body's standing committee. However, NPC standing committee chairman Li Jianguo said that a solution to find replacements for the removed officials need to be made soon to avoid problems.
Liaoning has been one of the regions that have been the focus of the government's effort to deal with so-called "zombie enterprises", state-owned companies whose performance ar4e well below expected levels and requires exceedingly large amounts of state funding for continued operations. The province became the first region in the country to post a negative quarterly gross domestic product growth in seven years.
Meanwhile, the CPC has named former Hubei Province Communist Party secretary Li Hongzhong as the new party chief for the city of Tianjin, replacing former city mayor and party secretary Huang Xingguo, who has been accused of corruption, the Japan Times reported.
Huang was dismissed by the CCDI on Saturday following ongoing investigations on the devastating chemical explosions that rocked Tianjin in 2015, which resulted in the deaths of at least 165 people. He remained in his position during the aftermath of the explosions despite several other officials being punished for granting permission for the stockpiling of a lot of chemicals near the city's residential areas, leading to the disaster.