5000 officials punished for corruption

China's top disciplinary authorities say that about 5000 officials above the county head level have been punished for corruption since November last year. Senior disciplinary officials are stressing that there will be no let up in the fight against corruption.

China'stopdisciplinaryauthoritiessaythatabout
5000officialsabovethecountyheadlevelhavebeen
punishedforcorruptionsinceNovemberlastyear.

Corruption is a major challenge for China's ruling party on its way in leading the 3-decade reform forward.

At the 17th CPC National Congress in last October, General Secretary Hu Jintao described the anti-corruption campaign as a matter of "life and death" to the Party.

Senior officials have promised on various occasions to step up anti-graft efforts and "win trust from the people with actual results."

This year's results are significant. 800 officials were prosecuted, including former vice major of Beijing, Liu Zhihua, who was also in charge of infrastructure construction of the Summer Games. He was given the death penalty in October.

Discipline inspection and supervision departments settled more than 140,000 cases involving 150,000 officials. And 6 billion yuan in losses were recovered.

Corruption in government and dereliction of duty has also caused social unrest in some areas and major food safety violations. The discipline watchdog says the officials responsible for these have been punished.

Observers note that serious corruption cases exposed the loopholes in China's legal systems. The government has acknowledged that building a comprehensive anti-corruption mechanism is urgent and encourages the general public and media to supervise the integrity of officials.