Beijing: President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive has resulted in more Chinese officials committing suicide, a media report said on Friday.
Last month alone, six officials took their own lives. Two officers from Henan and Hubei provinces respectively, left suicide notes saying they were depressed while one allegedly accepted to have taken bribes, Hong Kong based South China Morning Post reported.
A party official from Zhejiang died after "falling" from a building, the local government said, in the latest case of suicides by officials.
In a letter found on Zhao Jilai, inspector of the Hangzhou Economic and Information Technology Commission, he said that he had decided to "leave this world" after years of suffering from thyroid cancer and insomnia.
He begged for the Communist Party's forgiveness, saying he had never done "a single thing" that breached party's discipline.
Experts say the crackdown on corruption has put tainted officials under tremendous stress.
Besides netting a number of high level officials, including several from the army, the Party has now opened probe against former security czar Zhou Yongkong, the highest leader to be indicted so far in the country's recent history.
Twenty four officials including his son were under the scanner in connection with the probe.
"Chinese officials are having a hard time and their suicides are caused by the political system," Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian and political analyst, said.
The massive anti-graft drive has put great pressure on corrupt officials who fear being expelled if found out, says Ren Jianming of Beijing's Beihang University.
"We may see an increase in official-suicide incidents in the short term," he added.
Ren also pointed out that suicide could be a tactic by the officials to protect their families and political factions from further investigation.
"In Chinese culture, the dead should be respected. So after the officials' deaths, [any investigations] would stop," he said.
Officials were engaging in "altruistic suicide", said Professor Paul Yip Siu-fai, director of the Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the University of Hong Kong.
"Suicide is a way for corrupt officials to protect their wealth," he said.
All six who committed suicide last month were either low-or mid-ranking officials.
Zhang added that the recent cases of suicide among officials also reflected problems with Xi's corruption crackdown, which he said was no different from political campaigns during Mao Zedong's era that also saw many suicides.
"Suicide is... caused by the party's political campaigns," he said.
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