Xu Jianyi, board chairman and Party secretary of China FAW Group Cooperation, was placed under investigation for abuse of power on Sunday, followed by Liao Yongyuan, general manager of the China National Petroleum Corporation, on Monday. The message is the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China meant it when it said it would extend the focus of the crackdown on corruption to State-owned enterprises this year.

Some major SOEs were targeted in the third round of inspections the Party's watchdog conducted from November 2014 until February this year. The fall of the high-ranking leaders of the country's largest automaker and largest oil company is definitely the harvest from this round of scrutiny.

It was reported that some 70 leaders of both central and local SOEs were probed for abuse of power in 2014 alone. Of the nine board directors of the CNPC, five have already been placed under investigation.