Party fires top economic planner

China’s Communist Party fired a top official from the National Development and Reform Commission this week for “severe disciplinary violations,” Bloomberg reported. State-run Xinhua News Agency reported that NDRC Vice Chairman Liu Tienan was terminated, citing the Organization Department, which is charged with appointing officials. The Ministry of Supervision announced it was investigating Liu on Sunday. In a December microblog post, an editor at Caijing Magazine accused Liu of improper business dealings. “This is a case where the central government tries to signal its seriousness of anti-corruption and encouragement of real-name reporting of corruption,” said Jiangnan Zhu, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.