Educating officials' families to fight corruption

China's top women's organization hopes to educate officials' families in order to build a firewall for the Party and government officials against corruption.

About 800 officials and their family members gathered at the auditorium of the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday. The gathering is for one purpose – to help officials to stay away from corruption through learning from some model families.

Chen Weihua, a publicity official from the All-China Women's Federation, the organizer, told China Daily that her organization has beefed up anti-corruption education for public servants' families in recent years.

Li Xiuyuan, a young mother from the Supreme People's Court read a letter she wrote to her four-year-old son on the stage.

She compared her little son's desire for ice cream to officials' greed for money. "You need to control such desires as indulgence can destroy a person," she warned.

Later, the will of the former finance minister Wu Bo was projected on the big screen.

The audience marveled that Wu returned his only apartment in Beijing, his most valuable asset, to the government instead of giving it to his children after he passed away.

The central leadership has given more emphasis to moral education for families in the ongoing anti-corruption campaign given that the majority of officials' corruption cases involved their family members, said Ren Jianming, researcher and director of the Clean Governance Research Center in Beihang University.

Some officials were persuaded by their family members to take bribes and some others abused their power to help their relatives do business, he said.

Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief, was convicted of bribery, leaking State secrets and abusing power this May.

The court also ruled that Zhou's wife and son accepted money and property worth 129 million yuan ($20.2 million).