Communist Party of China (CPC) has been taking a hard line on corruption for the past five years, said a senior official with the party's discipline watchdog on Friday.

Since the CPC's 16th National Congress in 2002, discipline watchdogs at all levels have brought down a handful of high-ranking officials during their anti-graft campaigns, said Zhang Huixin, vice secretary of the party's Central Committee for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) in an interview with Xinhua.

"In particular, the case of Shanghai's former Party chief Chen Liangyu demonstrated CPC's great determination to fight against corruption," Zhang said.

Chen Liangyu was removed from his post for his involvement in the Shanghai pension fund scandal last year. He was the highest ranking Communist official busted in a corruption probe in a decade.

"In cracking these graft cases, the party not only punished the wrongdoers, but also gave potentially corrupt officials a warning," Zhang said.

According to CCDI statistics, in 2006, 97,260 of the CPC's 70 million members were punished for corruption. The punishments extended to prosecution for 3,530 cadres, seven of whom were at or above the level of minister or governor.

"For years, reports from the public have been the chief source we rely on to trace corrupt officials," Zhang said. "They are very helpful in offering first-hand clues or even leading to major breakthroughs."

But there have been increasing difficulties in cracking corruption cases in recent years, Zhang said. "A high percentage of them relate to economic violations or commercial bribery involving a wide range of social sectors."

Last year, Chinese prosecutors dealt with 10,883 commercial bribery cases, involving 3.8 billion yuan (US$494 million).

These cases involved an variety of economic activities ranging from construction projects, land and drug purchases, property right trade to government purchase and resource exploitation.

Despite this, the Party is resolute in probing into any corruption cases no matter how high-ranking the officials are, Zhang said.

Liu Fengyan, another CCDI vice secretary, said earlier that the Party's discipline watchdog has intensified the fight against corruption this year and is continuing to build a clean party.

Officials who purchase commercial housing at prices far lower than market prices by taking advantage of the influence of their posts, occupy and use borrowed houses and vehicles but fail to return them, take part in gambling or seek illicit money in activities like gambling, seek illegal profits by using others to invest in the stock market, or seek other forms of illegal earnings for themselves and their family relatives and friends will be seriously dealt with, Liu said.

He said the Party will stringently crack down on money-for-power favors, oppose waste and extravagance, curb the widespread trend of building and renovating government offices against regulations, eliminate sightseeing trips masquerading as "government-sponsored tours", and promote a thrifty style of work among Party members.

(Xinhua News Agency May 12, 2007)