Nearly 26,000 punished in anti-bureaucracy drive

BEIJING - ?A total of 25,855 people have been punished for breaches of a set of anti-bureaucracy rules announced one year ago, the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s discipline agency said on Thursday.

These violators were found to have been involved in 21,149 cases during the campaign as of the end of November, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement on its website.

Among them, 6,247 are CPC officials, including one at the ministerial level and 33 at the prefectural level, according to the report.

The "eight-point" anti-bureaucracy and formalism rules were introduced at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 4 last year. They ask CPC officials to reduce pomp, ceremony, bureaucratic visits and meetings.

The suspected violations include accepting or giving gifts, use of public funds for expensive recreational or body building activities, violations of workplace rules, and being lazy and sluggish at work, which altogether accounted for about 58 percent of all cases.

Violations of official car use rules account for 29 percent of all cases, according to the CCDI. Other cases involve holding excessively extravagant wedding ceremonies or funerals and lavish feasting with public funds.

Since the election of the new leadership, the CPC has launched a series of campaigns to eliminate bureaucracy, formalism and lavish spending of public funds.

The moves include banning of flower arrangements in meeting rooms, expensive liquor, delicacies such as shark fin, and luxurious gifts during festivals. Chinese officials were also asked to set examples through simple and frugal funerals and shun high-end clubs.