Leading Chinese officials will have to report their private property as a crackdown on corruption in the government and the communist party is expanded in the new year, state press said Tuesday.
The "family property reporting system" will be enforced in 2001 at the ministerial and provincial level and will be central to the fight against rising corruption, the People's Daily quoted Wei Jianxing, the top graft buster, as saying.
Wei, head of the party's Central Commission on Discipline Inspection, announced the moves on Sunday, the paper said.
The system would cover more than 200 central government ministers and provincial party secretaries and governors.
Wei ordered reforms to increase the powers of state auditors and financial departments.
"Only if the entire party can conscientiously expand the scale of the (anti-corruption) struggle in accordance with the demands of the central party, can the trend of growing corruption be contained and stopped," Wei said.
The committee investigated more than 130,000 cases this year, with 21 senior leaders punished, including former National People's Congress vice chairman Chen Kejie who was executed in October for corruption.
More than 130,000 party and government officials were punished for disciplinary problems, Wei said, with the state confiscating 5,154 cars and 4,465 computers purchased with government funds for private uses.
Wei further said the party would continue to put officials on trial this year, including in the 6.6-billion-dollar YuanHua smuggling case in southern China's Fujian province.
Fourteen officials and employees of the Yuanhua Group were sentenced to death in November for their roles in the operation which according to court documents included the smuggling of cigarettes, luxury goods, oil, diesel and cars.
Wei did not say when the next two groups of Yuanhua related trials, which could include vice ministerial level officials, would take place -- BEIJING (AFP)
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