More than 10,000 government officials were held liable by 11 provincial-level and 18 major city governments in the first half of 2006 amid a national move against lax administrative law enforcement, said a senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) here Thursday at a news conference.

Gan Yisheng, secretary-general and spokesman of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC, said the officials were all involved in administrative law enforcement cases and failed to perform their due duties accordingly.

In the half year, Gan said the commission enhanced and improved its supervision over the operation of the administrative and other power, which has significantly helped exercise its supervision function.

"China is now pushing forward its anti-corruption work in an in-depth way and seeks to prevent corruption from the root," said Gan.

He said that reforms to this end are carried out in the personnel, judicial, administrative, fiscal and tax, investment and finance sectors.

From early this year to the first half of 2007, the CPC, with its more than 70 million members, will reshuffle the posts of its more than 100,000 officials at provincial, prefectural, county and township levels.

The news conference is viewed as another effort that the CPC takes to warn the officials to behave themselves.

Gan said the CPC's inspection work, which is carried out by the commission and the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee at the central level, has also scored many achievements in helping supervise the operation of the administrative power.

Statistics from the commission indicate that a total of 489 cities and 888 counties have also been drawn into the range of the inspection by CPC's provincial-level disciplinary and organizational departments.

As a major anti-corruption measure, China is in the process of building an effective system to ensure the government affairs are appropriately made public.

To date, 53 of all the central departments directly under the State Council have set special leading groups to guide the work, with 28 writing down special rules to that effect.

"To promote the openness of the government affairs is a major content of the development of socialist democracy," said He Yong, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

According to Gan, some Chinese localities and departments have compiled a category of government affairs that should be made public timely after streamlining administrative power. "We will consider promoting the practice nationwide," he said.

In a bid to prevent possible corruption in the financing field, China is building a centralized payment system that requires all funds be directly channeled into the accounts.

All the central departments, together with their 3,643 units, have already adopted the practice, said Gan.

Wu Guanzheng, Secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, has instructed discipline and supervision bodies at different levels to exercise their roles to prompt the government to work cleanly.

Before this, Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, described the improvement of anti-corruption capability as one of the two critical tasks that the CPC has to face and stressed the anti-corruption work should "never be unfix at any moment".

Source: Xinhua