China probes boss of phone firm China Telecom

China’s anti-graft authority yesterday announced an investigation into the chairman of China Telecom, the latest high-ranking official to be targeted by the Communist Party as President Xi Jinping cracks down on corruption.

Chang Xiaobing is suspected of severe disciplinary violations, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement issued yesterday.

Mr Chang, 58, has only been the chairman and chief executive officer of China Telecom, the country´s third-largest wireless carrier, since September.

Separately, profits earned by Chinese industrial companies in November fell 1.4% from a year earlier, marking a sixth consecutive month of decline, statistics bureau data showed yesterday.

Industrial profits — which cover large enterprises with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan (€2.8m) from their main operations — fell 1.9% in the first 11 months of the year compared with the same period a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

The November profits of industrial firms have seen some improvement from the previous month — in October, profits fell 4.6% from a year earlier.

“The November industrial profit data matched earlier output data and they showed some signs of stabilising, which are in line with recent data from other Asian countries,” said Zhou Hao, China economist at Commerzbank in Singapore.

He said the figures were slightly better than market expectations.

The jump in November profits from the auto manufacturing and electricity sectors, up 35% and 51% from a year earlier, respectively, helped narrow overall declines, the statistics bureau said.

China last week outlined main economic targets for next year designed to help generate new areas of growth, while tackling factory overcapacity and property inventories.