Chinese people's belief that "a successful man must have an understanding wife" is mirrored in the stories of corrupt officials and their "understanding wives".

For the first time, those "understanding wives" are pictured with their corrupt husbands in an anti-corruption exhibition, complete with photos, organized by the Beijing Procuratorate, which opened here on Tuesday.

Li Zhiwen, former director of the health bureau of Nanping City in east China's Fujian Province, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison for taking bribes relating to project bids and quality inspections.

Li's wife, Wei Xianglian, "contributed significantly" to Li's corruption. She used to stay at home to help take bribes. She was sentenced to three years in prison with a five year reprieve.

The wife of Sun Junxue, former director of the economic and trade department of Beijing Shougang Corporation, helped her husband take bribes after her retirement. The two accepted a total of 880,000 yuan (about 114,000 U.S. dollars). Both of them were jailed.

"The spouses of government officials are also the targets of people offering bribes. Our fight against corruption will focus not only on officials but also on their spouses," said Li Qiang, a procurator of the Beijing Procuratorate.

The exhibition for the first time contains a section on corrupt village officials.

Fang Shumin, a former village official in Yanqing County, Beijing, was jailed for five months for embezzling nearly 7,000 yuan from a fund for poverty relief and another used to renovate dangerous houses.

"Previously we didn't show this kind of case because the sums of money involved are small. But we realized that such cases have a very bad effect in rural areas, because the money was supposed to be used to save lives," said Liu Kunfeng, director of the crime prevention department of the procuratorate.

"That kind of corruption endangers the stability of rural areas. So we set up this section to draw attention to the corruption of village officials," said Liu.

A total of 134 corruption cases are on display in the exhibition which will tour 18 districts and counties in Beijing over a period of ten days.