A local government in China has been found to have falsified land sale deals to inflate fiscal revenues amid a five-year slump in the country’s property market, reports the South China Morning Post.

The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said that in one case, a plot of land in Nanning, the capital of southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was “sold” 18 times without ever actually changing hands.

The party’s top anti-corruption watchdog said the tactic allowed the city government to artificially shore up its fiscal revenue by RMB 2.83 billion ($416.2 million) in 2024. “Captivated by quick gains, some authorities engaged in accounting gimmicks to reflect substantial rises in fiscal revenue, masking actual budget strains”, the CCDI said in a document.

Europe’s push to reduce its dependence on China is driving many of its companies deeper into Chinese supply chains, reports the South China Morning Post citing the head of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

“Europe is becoming more dependent on China, not less,” chamber president Jens Eskelund said, adding that for European firms, staying competitive increasingly meant embedding themselves more deeply in the supply chains Brussels wanted them to move away from.

Citing the results of a survey of nearly 300 chamber members in January and February, Eskelund said Europe was seeing “the highest-ever share of European companies onshoring more into China”. 56% of respondents said they were increasing onshoring in China, while just 7% said they were only increasing offshoring. That dependence was increasingly driven by cost, he said, with Chinese supply chains having become so competitive that integrating into them was often the only way to produce the best products at the lowest cost.

Beijing authorities said the pilot of a small plane that crashed into Beijing’s tallest building last week had long suffered from anxiety and discussed “ending his life” in his diary, reports the South China Morning Post.

In a brief summary of an investigation, the Chaoyang district government said the pilot was a 66-year-old Beijing resident, identified only by his surname Liu. Liu died when the light aircraft he was flying struck Citic Tower in the capital’s central business district on Friday.

The authorities said Liu, a freelance worker who was divorced and lived alone, obtained a sport pilot licence in 2021 and a private pilot licence in 2024.

China has removed six senior PLA officers from the country’s top legislative body, reports the South China Morning Post. This is the latest sign that the country’s military anti-corruption campaign is not slowing down.

According to a late-night notice issued by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on Friday, 13 members of the legislature had been removed and one had resigned. Aside from the six generals, those removed also included a former top financial regulator and the former Xinjiang Communist Party chief.

Of the seven members of the Central Military Commission named at the party’s national congress in 2022, only two remain–Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the PLA’s anti-corruption chief, Zhang Shengmin.

China’s state auditor has uncovered RMB 1.08 billion ($160 million) in irregularities involving maternity insurance and subsidy funds, reports Caixin, affecting the benefits of more than one million people.

The National Audit Office (NAO) in its annual report on the central budget execution examined RMB 53.1 billion across 26 provinces and found that local governments failed to issue RMB 1.03 billion in benefits to over 900,000 people. In 19 provinces, authorities failed to cover maternity insurance premiums for nearly 340,000 unemployed individuals, violating regulations that require unemployment insurance funds to make these payments on their behalf. 

The audit also revealed widespread fraud, with RMB 54.3 million illegally obtained or distributed. In 17 provinces, 279 employers scammed RMB 31.1 million from the maternity insurance fund by fabricating employment relationships and artificially inflating the payment base to maximize payouts.