Xu Caihou
After Guo's retirement, Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and supreme commander of the PLA, began a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign. Guo was subject of intense rumours surrounding possible involvement with corruption during his time in office, particularly in overseas Chinese media. Guo and his former colleague of the same rank, retired general Xu Caihou, attended a new year's gala in early 2014, signalling that both may have "weathered the storm". However, shortly thereafter, in the summer of 2014, as part of the fallout of the Gu Junshan case, Xu was court-martialed and expelled from the party. After Xu's fall, Guo was euphemistically referred to in Chinese-language media as the "Northwest Wolf" (), an oblique reference to Xi Jinping's slogan to "crack down on 'tigers' and 'flies'." Sensing impending doom, friends from Guo's hometown visited Guo in Beijing, urging him to "clarify the situation to the authorities" to avoid the same fate as Xu. In response, Guo reportedly said, "some things cannot be easily clarified." His fate was sealed.