34,000 punished in anti-bureaucracy crackdown

BEIJING - A total of 34,284 people were punished between December 2012 and the end of January this year for breaching anti-bureaucracy rules, the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s discipline agency said on Tuesday.

The violators were found to have been involved in 27,322 cases, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement.

Among them, 8,685 were punished by administrative and Party discipline agencies, including one at ministerial level and 49 at prefectural level, according to the statement.

The CCDI has set up a process, demanding the 31 provincial-level areas on the Chinese mainland, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and 60 central Party and government organs to report violations of anti-bureaucracy rules on a monthly basis, the statement said.

In total, 2,986 people involved in 2,288 cases were dealt with in January.

Violations in January included 1,031 cases concerning workplace rules, 442 involving official car use infringements, and 186 involving holding excessively extravagant wedding ceremonies or funerals.

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, 2012. They ordered CPC officials to reduce pomp, ceremony, bureaucratic visits and meetings.