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President Hu Jintao calls for corruption fight
(Xinhua/AP)
Updated: 2006-01-08 08:43
The Communist Party of China (CPC) called on its members Saturday to do more
to fight corruption and problems such as unpaid back wages for migrant workers.
The appeal warned against complacency in a multiyear anti-graft campaign.
The fight against corruption is a long-term, complicated
and arduous task, and Party must push ahead with its anti-graft drive
unswervingly, President Hu Jintao said in a speech during a two-day meeting of
the party's top discipline body.
Severe punishments should be meted out for those who have violated Party
rules in such ways as abuse of power, embezzlement of public funds, giving and
receiving bribes, and dereliction of duty, Hu said.
Thousands of officials have been punished, and some executed, in an effort to
stamp out graft and other abuses.
Former Land and Resouce Minister Tian Fengshan was jailed for life last month
on charges of taking bribes as late as 2003, well after the start of the latest
crackdown.
In December, China's national audit office said it found financial abuses at
government agencies last year totaling $36 billion. It said 196 officials were
prosecuted or received administrative punishment.
The party declaration also promised to take action on other issues that could
fuel unrest, including billions in unpaid wages owed to migrant workers and
illegal school fees that many poor families can't afford.
Millions of Chinese have been left behind by their country's 25-year-old
economic boom, especially in the vast, poor countryside, home to some 800
million people.
The government is in the midst of a campaign to force employers to pay back
wages owed to laborers from the countryside who work in construction and other
dirty, dangerous urban jobs. Estimates of wages owed to migrants range as high
as $12 billion.
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