Update | China launches massive suicide survey after party officials’ deaths during graft crackdown

The Chinese Communist Party has launched a massive suicide investigation, asking cadres across the nation to uncover “unnatural deaths” in the two years that President Xi Jinping has implemented his corruption crackdown.

The party put out notices on government websites asking officials to report about such deaths – which by definition include murders, accidents and executions, but by the party’s instructions are more focused on those that have been deemed suicides between December 2012 and last year.

The period coincides with the anti-graft drive launched by President Xi Jinping soon after he became general secretary of the party in late 2012. The cleaning-up of party rot, which includes the People’s Liberation Army, has resulted in around 200,000 officials being disciplined.

“There’s a growing number of official suicide cases reported over the past two years as the anti-corruption campaign intensified,” said Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing.

Zhang said those officials driven to suicide could possibly be protecting their superiors or family members from the agony of a corruption investigation.

Under the suicide investigation, cadres are instructed to fill in forms, printed with eight-column charts, including the name, sex, rank and work unit of the deceased, along with the time and cause of death.

They are instructed to choose among a list of options to describe the location, method of death of the suicides and whether the deceased were under corruption investigation at the time of death, along with the status of the investigation when the death occurred.