Shanghai mayor promises openness in graft fight

SHANGHAI, Dec 25 (Reuters) The acting Communist Party boss of China's financial hub has promised more transparency in the fight against graft, a state newspaper said today after his predecessor was sacked for corruption.

Han Zheng, who is also Shanghai's mayor, added that improving oversight of officials would ensure too much power was not concentrated in the hands of one person, said the People's Daily, the Communist Party's newspaper.

Former Shanghai Party chief Chen Liangyu was dramatically dismissed in September after being implicated in a scandal over misuse of the city's social security fund, part of a larger government crackdown on corruption.

''Openness is the best anti-graft pill, and transparency itself is a kind of supervision,'' Han was quoted as telling a December 20 meeting in Shanghai. ''We have decided next year to keep pushing openness of government information.'' China is in the midst of a crackdown on official corruption, which the ruling Communist Party says is so widespread it could threaten the Party's credibility and even survival.

Chen was accused of misusing pension funds and helping enrich cronies in a case that exposed corruption in China's richest and most cosmopolitan city.

Analysts said President Hu Jintao had also become increasingly unhappy with Chen's perceived defiance of central government policies.

Han said that the Party must make sure it did not fall under the thrall of one person.

''We must make sure that no one person places themselves above the Party organisation or that one person acts dictatorially,'' he said.

''Some corruption cases show that there are deficiencies in the building of our systems, and that there are problems of these systems not being put into effect seriously enough,'' Han added, without mentioning specific examples by name.

In October, the official Xinhua news agency issued a terse commentary warning officials not to set up cliques with former colleagues or classmates, in an apparent message to the so-called Shanghai Gang after the sacking of Chen.

President Hu has stepped up a campaign to consolidate his position, edging out allies of predecessor Jiang Zemin who had his power base in Shanghai.

REUTERS MS HT1532