Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao speaks at a special meeting on fighting corruption in Beijing, China, on March 25, 2008. The sole agenda item for Tuesday's meeting was this year's anti-corruption work by the State Council, or cabinet. (Xinhua Photo)

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday vowed to put fighting corruption at the top of his agenda, at a special meeting of his new Cabinet.

The sole agenda item for the meeting was this year's anti-corruption work by the State Council, or Cabinet.

Wen said over-concentration of power plus ineffective supervision served as an important reason behind the spread of corruption. He stressed the importance of improving the system for supervising and containing over-concentration of power.

The fight against corruption should give prominence to establishing systematic restrictions to such unsupervised power, he said.

Wen said the previous Cabinet session had made improvements in resolving some serious cases of corruption and cracking down on commercial bribery.

However, he admitted that scandals involving government departments and officials had been increasing and some bribery cases, in which huge amount of capital was involved, enraging the public.

Wen did not identify the specific names of the government departments holding unsupervised power at the meeting on Tuesday afternoon attended by all four vice premiers and state councilors.

Chen Qinghai, a deputy to the National People's Congress, said in this year's parliamentary session that corruption was easier to breed in industries such as real estate, medicine and medical appliance purchase and sales, since administrative power still was concentrated on those industries.

Concerning the arrangement of anti-corruption work for this year, Wen asked the officials to focus on these issues:

-- Improving the system of decision-making through democratic consultation that has been applied in evaluation, public hearing and scrutiny in making policy;

-- Reform in exploring and utilizing public resources such as land and minerals, in which auctions of those resources would be specially audited and investigated to identify illegal practice and prevent loss of state assets;

-- Stricter regulation by law enforcement of administrative organs such as the police, and increased transparency in government financial management of major investments or projects consuming taxpayers' money;

-- Balancing the power held by administrative heads with more accountability through investigation and punishment if they misuse the power to seek personal gain and infringe public interests.

The premier urged zero tolerance of corruption of any kind. In cases of commercial bribery, in particular, where the collusion of officials with vendors and misconduct in working, food and environment safety, investigations would be thorough.

The National Bureau of Corruption Prevention of China was founded in May last year. The bureau has been endowed with tasks to deal with government-related corruption with an affiliation to the Ministry of Supervision.

One of the most striking cases of corruption in the past five years was that of Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), who was executed after being convicted of taking 6.49 million yuan in bribes in return for approving hundreds of medicines, some that proved dangerous.

In addition, former Shanghai Communist Party chief Chen Liangyuhas been expelled from the Party and dismissed from all government posts and remains in jail awaiting trial.

Editor: Yan