The Communist Party of China (CPC) expelled 21,120 members last year for breaking the Party's rules, mainly for their involvement in corruption scandals, CPC's discipline watchdog disclosed recently.

According to the annual report of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 2,744 corrupt officials, out of the nearly 100,000 Party members punished last year, were removed from their posts.

Another 8,777 CPC members were put on probation to determine whether they should retain their Party membership, according to the report.

Gan Yisheng, Vice Secretary of the commission, said that 97,260 CPC members were punished last year for corruption. The punishments extended to prosecution against 3,530 high-ranking officials, seven of whom were at or above the level of minister or governor.

Anti-commercial Bribery

China tackled 17,084 commercial bribery cases from August 2005 to the end of 2006, involving more than 4.5 billion yuan.

The statistics were released by Li Yubin, Deputy Director of the Leading Group on Combating Commercial Bribery under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Li said that more than 2.6 million enterprises and governmental departments have conducted self-inspection activities since China started a campaign tackling cases of commercial corruption or commercial bribery, recovering 417 million yuan of illegal earnings.

He continued that the campaign would focus on the punishment of officials who take bribes by making use of their positions this year. Enterprises and individuals involved in commercial bribery will be punished severely and included on a blacklist, Li added.

Copyright Royalties

Leading karaoke bars in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, have led their counterparts throughout the country to agree to pay copyright royalties to songwriters, a month after the National Copyright Administration issued an order to do so.

The 12 bars had signed agreements with the China Audio and Video Association (CAVA) to pay the royalties within 15 days, the liaison office of CAVA in Kunming announced on February 15. In response to the positive feedback and quick signing-up from the bars, CAAC has decided to charge them with a preferential rate of 8 yuan for each private room in the bars.

The ceiling rate for each private room in karaoke bars was set at 12 yuan per day by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) last November.

According to initial estimates, 10 billion yuan in revenues racked up by the 100,000 karaoke bars across China each year should theoretically generate 8 million yuan in royalties for copyright holders.

The NCAC has approved collecting royalties from karaoke bars for using music videos as of January 1, 2007 at a rate of 12 yuan for each room per day.