China's fight against corruption has been intensified, but the overall situation remains grave, both China's top judge and top prosecutor said in their work report on Monday at the ongoing parliamentary session.

Jia Chunwang, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said that 35 officials at the provincial or ministerial level, 930 at the municipal level and nearly 14,000 at or above the county level were investigated for embezzlement, bribery, misappropriation of public funds in the past five years.

And Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), said that Chinese courts tried and concluded 120,000 embezzlement, bribery and dereliction of duty cases, up 12.15 percent over the previous five years.

Jia said that this year prosecutors will give more prominence to investigating and preventing crimes by government officials and continue to vigorously investigate corruption cases involving high-ranking officials and big sums of money.

He also stressed that prosecution offices will redouble efforts to prevent crimes by government officials and strive to establish a corruption punishment and prevention mechanism.

Both Xiao Yang and Jia Chunwang vowed special efforts will be made to build a clean and honest judge and procurator contingent. They said no leniency will be shown to judicial workers who abuse their power. Corrupt judges and procurators will be "severely dealt with."

One of the most striking cases of corruption broken in the past five years was that of Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), who was executed in July. Zheng was found guilty of taking 6.49 million yuan in bribes and of dereliction of duty.

In addition, the case of former Shanghai chief of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Chen Liangyu moved to a new stage. He has been expelled from the CPC and dismissed from all government posts and remains in jail awaiting trial.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in his government work report last week, "We will attach even greater importance to combating corruption and encouraging integrity, and fight corruption unequivocally."

POWER NEEDS TO BE UNDER SUPERVISION

"The country's anti-corruption mechanism under construction has played an important role in curbing the rise and spread of corruption, but the general situation remains worrying," said Mu Ping, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) and head of the people's procuratorate of Beijing.

Mu said that the occurrences of major corruption cases in Beijing were involving more illicit money over the past three years than ever before.

"Corruption is easier to breed in certain industries, such as real estate, medicine and medical appliance purchase and sales, because administrative power still concentrates in these industries," said Chen Qinghai, an NPC deputy and official with the Anhui Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC.

With public bidding and an expert evaluation system introduced to those fields, and government operation under public supervision, corruption could be further reduced, Chen said

Mu Ping said boosting economic development and fighting corruption are the two major factors to test the governing capacity of the ruling Communist Party. China, on one hand, is regulating a socialist market economy, and on the other hand, is forming the rule of "every power will be under supervision."

One optimistic sign is that Wen mentioned in his report this year that the government would "create conditions to enable the people to oversee the government more effectively."

(Xinhua News Agency March 10, 2008)