113,000 officials punished, but China says graft problem serious

BEIJING - A total of 113,000 officials were punished in China for corruption from January to November this year, authorities said as they admitted that the problem is “still very serious”.

Figures released Wednesday showed a total of 113,000 officials were punished from January to November for corruption, up 6 percent year-on-year, China Daily reported Thursday.

Of the 113,000 officials who were punished, 4,332 had been handed over to judicial authorities for further investigation, said Wu Yuliang, secretary-general of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

He said that disciplinary authorities in China placed 119,000 corruption-related cases under probe in the first 11 months of the year, an increase of three percent over the same period last year.

Wu said that the CPC and the government have adopted resolute measures to curb graft.

A National Bureau of Statistics survey has said that 83.8 percent of Chinese thought corruption had been reduced in 2010, up from 68.1 percent in 2003.

But it acknowledged that the country is still faced with “long-haul, complicated and arduous anti-graft missions”, with social conflict increasing since the country has undergone dramatic change, and the ideas and concepts of the people have altered.

“Since the relevant mechanisms and systems are still incomplete, corruption persists, some cases even involving huge sums of money,” the report said. “Breaches of law and discipline tend to be more covert, intelligent and complicated.”