Senior official found hanged in suspected suicide

Undated file photo of Liu Xiaohua, deputy secretary-general of the Communist Party of China's Guangdong provincial committee. [Photo/IC]

A senior official was found hanged at his home in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Sunday, local media reported.

Police confirmed the death of Liu Xiaohua, deputy secretary-general of the Communist Party of China's Guangdong provincial committee, and ruled out the possibility of homicide.

However, no further details were revealed and Guangdong's top anti-graft body refused to comment on Liu's death on Monday.

Before being appointed to what would be his final posting in March, Liu was deputy Party chief and mayor of Heyuan city until 2011 when he became Party chief director of the People's Congress of Zhanjiang, a port city in western Guangdong.

Born in 1959, Liu was a native of Xingning, a county-level city which is under the administration of Meizhou city in the eastern part of Guangdong province.

Xingning has been the birthplace of more prefecture-level Party and government officials than any other city in the whole province, local media reported.

Three of its sons — Luo Ou, former secretary-general of Guangdong provincial government, Li Zhujiang, head of the Guangdong provincial Oceanic and Fishery Administration, and Liu Zhigeng, former deputy governor of Guangdong have all been dismissed from their posts recently on suspicion of corruption.

Another former official with connections to the city is Wan Qingliang, former Party chief of Guangzhou, who worked in Meizhou city for 15 years.

Reported to have had mistresses and sought an extravagant and wasteful life, Wan was expelled from the Party and dismissed from public office for corruption in 2014.

He pleaded guilty to charges of accepting bribes at a public hearing held in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in December.