The Communist Party's discipline inspection body is investigating the chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for an alleged serious violation of discipline, a spokesman of the ministry told China Daily on Thursday.

Su Jinsheng [File photo]

According to ministry spokesman Wang Lijian, the Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has recently taken away the chief engineer, Su Jinsheng, for investigation, without elaborating on charges or if anyone else was also involved.

However, another official with the ministry's publicity office, who only gave her surname as Zhang, said Su was "suspected of a serious violation of Party discipline" - which is usually law breaking as well.

The ministry's functions range from defining macro-level strategies and policies, allocating investments and central budgets, to outlining micro-level standards, management and inspection practices for the country's industries and information sectors.

According to media reports, the focus of the chief engineer's recent work was a February survey on the development of 3G - a new market growth driver - in China's major three telecommunication carriers.

The Beijing-based business portal, Caixin Online, reported that an unnamed insider of a telecommunication service provider said the probe on Su might be a continuation of earlier investigations into a group corruption case inside State-controlled China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier by the number of users.