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881,000 officials disciplined in 5 yrs

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-22 21:26

BEIJING -- Chinese disciplinary organs have punished 881,000 officials for misconduct from July 2003 to December 2008, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said on Wednesday.

They were involved in 852,000 cases of corruption, commercial bribes, and other discipline or law-breaking activities, the CPC anti-corruption body said.

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Among the crooked officials, 2,386 were at or above prefectural level and 29,905 at county levels, the CCDI's figures showed.

And 24,718 of them had been transferred to judicial organs to wait for criminal charges, it said.

Since the CPC's 16th National Congress in 2003, the CCDI and the Ministry of Supervision handled a string of major cases involving corrupt, high-ranking officials including former Shanghai Party chief Chen Liangyu and former food and drug administration head Zheng Xiaoyu, the commission said.

Chen, who was involved in a social security fund scandal, was sentenced to 18 years in jail for bribery and abuse of power. Zheng was executed in 2007 for taking 6.49 million yuan (about 889,000 U.S. dollars) in bribes, and for dereliction of duty.

China has been intensifying its efforts to combat corruption in recent years.

In January this year, Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, urged the CCDI to "firmly correct official wrongdoing" that harms public interests.

He called on the discipline organs to focus on power abuse, bribery and misconduct, pledging that no corrupt officials would be allowed to escape punishment.