China cracks down on official corruption

• Tweet

BEIJING, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- The crackdown against official corruption in China resulted in thousands of officials being punished in the past five years, a Communist party official said.

Official corruption has been a rampant problem in China, spurred by the country's booming economy, and strong measures have been adopted by the party in recent years to fight it.

He Guoqiang, head of the party's anti-corruption agencies, said authorities across the country investigated more than 640,000 corruption cases from 2007 to this year and that more than 630,000 cases had been resolved, Xinhua News Agency reported. Details of the punishment meted out to those found guilty weren't provided.

He said among the cases, those of disgraced former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, former Railways Minister Liu Zhijun and former Shenzhen Mayor Xu Zongheng, were relentlessly pursued, Xinhua said.

The official said ferreting out corruption is a long-term task in the process of building a clean government, adding corrupt individuals, no matter who they are, will never escape punishment in accordance with party discipline and the law.