For example, a middle-level official with a municipal administration of Beijing spent 1.25 million yuan ($203,915) on an apartment and car for his mistress and accepted bribes worth nearly 2 million yuan ($326,264).

Zhu Lijia, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, has long advocated including sexual bribery as an offence in the laws governing corruption. He believes the damage caused by sexual bribery is not less than that caused by financial corruption.

However, in reality sexual bribery is often neglected during the trials of corrupt officials, due to a lack of an accurate legal definition.

According to the Criminal Law of China, the charge of bribery is concerned purely with financial reward. That means officials found to have accepted bribes of a sexual nature are dealt with by disciplinary authorities instead of a criminal court.

In the case of Liu Zhijun, the Beijing No.2 Intermediate Court said that the former minister exploited his position to provide help to 11 people, including Ding Yuxin, Board Chairwoman of the Boyou Investment Management Corp., and her relatives, to gain promotion and win lucrative contracts, all of which resulted in financial gain.

Although Internet whistle-blowers claimed Ding, in return, provided Liu with women, the allegations were not confirmed by the court.

"It's the right time to regard the provision of sexual services as a form of bribery and the definition of corruption should be widened to include this as soon as possible," said Yang Xiaojun, a legal expert with the Chinese Academy of Governance.

Ren Jianming, Director of the Clean Governance Research and Education Center at Beihang University in Beijing, also supported calls to widen the definition of bribery with the aim of better identifying related crimes.

Legislation dilemma

Luo with the Haidian District Procuratorate suggested directly including sexual bribery into the Criminal Law. "Whether it's a lovers' relationship or trading relationship, we should regard it as bribery," he said.

According to Luo, the principal obstacle is that the current Criminal Law of China limits its definition of corruption to issues of property and financial benefits. "This creates difficulty in measuring punishment in the 'sex-power trade' because it is hard to measure the 'trade' as a tangible property," Luo said.

Yi pointed out that the major challenge is to distinguish between a purely sexual transaction instigated for the benefit of the person involved or for a third party and an illicit affair based on genuine affection.

"It is hard to obtain evidence of sexual bribery," he said. "Corruption through money involves a financial transaction, but sexual bribery doesn't. It's a 'trade' between the official and the woman, which means it's not easy to expose unless the two have a fall out and the woman decides to go public."

Sexual bribery also touches on morality. "Sometimes a person's actions can only be criticized from a moral standpoint and will not result in serious punishment," Yi said.

Zuo Jianwei, a professor at the Law School of Beijing Normal University, agrees that it is hard to identify sexual relationships in China. "Besides, there is no unified standard to define sexual bribery so that everyone can have their own judgments on the relationships," Zuo said.

Besides, Yi thinks that because of moral concerns, it is also a big challenge for those judicial officers to further investigate sexual bribery cases. "The situation requires judicial officers to have high-level professional qualities and abilities. Under the current situation, it's still an impossible mission at primary-level judicial organs," Yi said.

Liu Renwen, Director of the Criminal Law Department of CASS' Institute of Law, suggested enlarging the extent of corrupt behavior in current law by conforming to international treaties.

In 2005, China ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption. The convention defines a bribe as an "improper benefit," and lists eight crimes of corruption, including accepting sexual favors.

Liu prefers to introduce the definition of "improper benefit" into the Criminal Law to cover traditional bribery as well as intangible exchanges including sexual bribery.

In addition to criminalization of sexual bribery, Zhu thinks that the key to cracking down on sexual bribery also lies in a stringent supervision. He suggested the Party should impose harsher punishments on those discovered to have accepted sexual bribes.

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