Wang Zhaoyao, former deputy secretary of the Provincial Communist Party of China (CPC) Committee of east China's Anhui Province, went on trial on Wednesday.

Wang is accused of taking bribes amounting to 7.04 million yuan (898,000 U.S. dollars) and failing to account for property worth 8.1 million yuan (1.02 million dollars).

Wang also took advantage of his position to promote his wife and his wife's brothers to senior positions in local government departments.

The trial at Jinan Intermediate People's Court in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province started at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 3:00 p.m..

The hearing went on "very smoothly" as Wang pleaded guilty to every charge, a court source told Xinhua.

The court would deliver its ruling at a later date, the source said.

Court officials took an hour to read the 44 charges against Wang.

According to the prosecution, most of the charges involved bribery and helping others in promotion, for which Wang allegedly accepted three million yuan (375,000 U.S. dollars).

Wang, 62, had served as secretary of the Suxian and Fuyang prefectural level CPC committees, deputy governor of Anhui and deputy secretary of the Anhui Provincial CPC Committee.

He was a deputy to the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), but was expelled from the national legislative body in August 2005 for serious breaches of discipline.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate appointed Shandong Provincial People's Procuratorate to investigate Wang's case on Sept. 14 last year and he was arrested about two weeks later.

In 2003, former vice-governor of Anhui Wang Huaizhong was sentenced to death by the Jinan Intermediate People's Court for taking bribes valued 5.17 million yuan (623,000 dollars) from 1994 to 2001 and possessing 4.8 million yuan (578,000 dollars) that he could not account for.

Wang Zhaoyao's corrupt earnings were almost double that of Wang Huaizhong's, according to Bao Feng, the public prosecutor of Shandong Provincial People's Procuratorate.

"Despite the increased anti-corruption efforts of the government, corruption, especially bribery and graft, is still a serious problem," said Wang Huanhai, the public procurator of Shandong Provincial People's Procuratorate.

"Corruption is a malignant tumor that governments should cut out decisively as it can affect and corrupt other cadres," said an official with the CPC municipal committee of Fuyang city, in Anhui, over which Wang Zhaoyao once presided.

This year saw the downfall of Chen Liangyu, former secretary of the CPC Shanghai municipal committee and the highest ranking official to fall to corruption charges in the past decade, and Qiu Xiaohua, former director of the National Bureau of Statistics.

Altogether 67,505 government officials have been punished in China for corruption since 2003, with more than 17,505 prosecuted and sanctioned in the first eight months of this year.

President Hu Jintao said last month, "We are stepping up efforts to improve the rule of law and create a culture of clean and honest government, while strengthening the supervision of power."

The government has set up anti-graft bureaus in procuratorates at all levels, and employs 36,000 people in its anti-corruption efforts.

Source: Xinhua