The total cost of international trips made by government and Party officials dropped by 21.4 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, reflecting the government's efforts to curb excessive use of public funds.

He Guoqiang, secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCPI), said at a meeting Saturday that the government's budget for international trips, official cars and reception fees was cut by another 5.75 billion yuan ($858 million) this year, following a 15.81 billion yuan reduction last year, People's Daily reported Sunday.

The report didn't give the breakdown of costs for the three separate items, which have been dubbed as the three gongkuan xiaofei, or public fund expenditures, and the subject of years of criticism.

Ren Yuling, a counselor of the State Council, revealed in 2006 that China's administrative costs in 2003 made up 19 percent of the country's total fiscal expenditure, much higher than that of developed countries or the global average.

He added that administrative costs in 2003 were a staggering 87 times the amount of 1978.

Analysts noted that the abnormal surge of administrative costs is closely related to excessive and unsupervised spending of public money on cars, trips and dining by officials. Jiang Hong, a professor at the Public Economy and Management School under the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said in March that the cost of the three gongkuan xiaofei is estimated to be 1 trillion yuan each year.

After the government began tackling this problem of so-called "soft corruption" in 2006, a slew of regulations was announced and expenditure has seen a drop in recent years.