China jails official in graft crackdown

BEIJING, Sep 19: China sentenced a former senior provincial official to 11 years in jail for taking bribes, state media reported today, adding to the toll of cadres punished in the Communist Party's anti-corruption drive.

The former deputy Communist Party secretary of coal-rich Shanxi province in northern China, Hou Wujie, was sentenced by a Beijing court yesterday, the China News Agency reported.

According to the report, Hou took bribes in 2000 totalling 880,000 yuan (110,000 dollar) from a deputy police chief of Taiyuan, Shanxi's capital, who had hoped to take the top police job there.

Hou ''fully confessed'' to his misdeeds, the report said.

China's President, Hu Jintao, has warned that widespread official corruption is undermining public acceptance of Communist Party rule, and over the weekend the party's top anti-corruption official again chastised officials.

''Some wallow in feasting and hedonism and lead debauched lives; some take and give money and even trade in official posts,'' Wu Guanzheng wrote in the latest issue of Seeking Truth, the party's ideological journal.

''This could gravely damage relations between officials and the public.'' In past months, anti-corruption investigations have claimed several powerful officials, none of them in the party's top echelon.

Last week, Xu Fangming, former division director in China's Ministry of Finance, was sentenced to life imprisonment for taking bribes.

In June, Liu Zhihua, a Beijing vice-mayor who oversaw construction for the 2008 Olympics, was dismissed after being accused of corruption and dissolute behaviour.

More than 100 central government investigators were dispatched to Shanghai in August to investigate whether money had been siphoned out of the city's 10 billion yuan (1.25 billion dollar) social security fund through illicit loans or investments.

The Shanghai corruption probe has implicated two senior city government officials and at least three prominent executives in real estate, private investment and a utility firm.

REUTERS