Several loopholes remain in the legislation China has designed to stamp out commercial bribery, according to a blue paper on the development of the country's legal system in 2007.

The paper, released by the Social Sciences Academic Press, says the current laws are not strict enough and the penalties are too lenient at both legislative and executive level.

The number of commercial bribery cases dealt with by Chinese courts rose to 4,406 in the first seven months, 8.2 percent more than the same period last year, according to the Supreme People's Court (SPC).

Commercial bribery involving corporate wrong-doings rose 37.3 percent and cases relating to individual employees of companies jumped by 52.1 percent.

"China will continue to target government officials who take advantage of their posts to collude with companies for illegal profit," Xiong Xuanguo, vice president of the SPC, said.

A host of "big fish" involved in bribery cases, including Zhang Enzhao, former chairman of the China Construction Bank, Liu Wenjie, former vice chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and Xu Fangming, former head of the finance department under the Ministry of Finance, have been severely punished since the country's clean-up campaign which started in 2005.

China has seen 9,582 registered cases of commercial bribery involving a total sum of more than 1.5 billion yuan (about US$200 million) in 2006.

(Xinhua News Agency October 23, 2007)