The government's on-going fight against corruption appears to be paying off with an improving public image and a good deal more government transparency which is likely to ensnare even more dirty officials.

Over the past year, hundreds of corrupt officials have been penalized for taking bribes, seeking illegal gains or neglecting the public's interests.

From August 2005 to June 2006, China dealt with 13,376 commercial bribery cases, involving 3.76 billion yuan (US$470 million), according to the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

The crackdown on commercial bribery, which usually refers to bribes offered by companies to government officials in exchange for special favors, was the highlight of the commission's work last year.

A total of 3,128 cases, or 23.4 percent of commercial briberies directly involved government employees. Those cases had a monetary value of some 968 million yuan (US$121 million) or 25.7 percent of the total funds involved in commercial bribery.

The commission's seventh plenary session is expected to begin soon.

Cleaning up coal mines

The commission's campaign to force government officials to reveal and withdraw their investment in coal mines has also been central to the commission's work.

It issued an ultimatum in August 2005 requiring government officials and leaders of state-owned enterprises, none of whom are allowed to engage in private businesses, to withdraw their shares in coal mines.

More than 5,370 officials voluntarily reported total investments of 755 million yuan (US$94 million) in coal mines. Just under 94 percent of those officials have divested their stakes in coal mines which were worth a total of 709 million yuan (US$88.6 million).

The public has also helped the commission's crackdown on cross-ownership of coal mines. They made 1,022 complaints against officials who were involved in coals and the commission has so far investigated 928 of the tips.

The commission's statistics show that 148 officials who failed to report and divest their ownership in coal mines were given disciplinary punishment, 122 were demoted or relieved of their posts and 45 faced criminal prosecution.

The move to force government-paid officials, who are supposed to regulate mines, to divest and end their conflict of interest was part of the Party's efforts to curb accidents in the coal mining industry.

Many small and unsafe coal mines, some of them illegal, often fail to observe safety rules because they are protected by local officials who are part owners of the mines. Close to 5,000 miners were killed in China's coal mines last year.

Safeguard the public's interests

The commission also investigated many cases that directly affected people's pocketbooks, especially illegal fees charged by educational and medical institutions.

Over the past year, the commission and the Ministry of Supervision, who's work parallels that of the commission, investigated 16 major cases of unwarranted educational and medical fees, forcing the institutions to return more than 200 million yuan (US$25 million) to individuals.

The campaign against illegal fees also required local governments to amend 382 regulations that contravened central government policies on charging parents education fees. This wiped out 1,448 fees people were being illegally charged.

Discipline commissions at provincial levels or lower dealt with 2,535 cases of bribery in the medical sector. These cases involved 606 million yuan (US$75 million) that mainly involved pharmaceutical factories bribing doctors to write unnecessary prescriptions for their drugs.

Doctors and nursing staff in local hospitals were forced to hand over more than 240 million yuan (US$30 million) in ill begotten gains.

The commission has also targeted wrong doings to migrant workers and peasants, who had their salaries wrongfully delayed or farmland illegal seized or homes demolished without adequate compensation.

By the end of last June, construction workers in various parts of the country had been paid 177 billion yuan (US$21.9 billion) in back wages, 95.2 percent of the total that had been in arrears.