Joint action was promised by 22 cabinet-level departments at a meeting convened by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China.

A recent central government document said commercial bribery was widespread in six areas: construction, land use, transaction of property rights, distribution of medicine, government procurement and development of land resources.

Commercial bribery causes great economic losses to the country. Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce reveal that in the medicine trade alone, 772 million yuan (US$95 million) could be involved in kickbacks each year, accounting for almost 16 per cent of the industry's revenue.

Many cases of commercial bribery in the industry have been exposed recently.

In Central China's Hunan Province, Wang Daosheng, former deputy secretary-general of the provincial government, was arrested for helping a private company buy a local State-owned medicine company for a low price.

The tough business environment has also lured some foreign companies into offering bribes.

A Tianjin-based subsidiary of Diagnostic Products Co Ltd was recently fined US$4.8 million by the US Department of Justice for bribing doctors in China's State-owned hospitals for buying its medical equipment and services last year.

Jing Yunchuan, a lawyer at Beijing-based Gaotong Law Service, said the anti-bribery campaign will change the way many companies and individuals do business.

Also, bribe-taking is an offence applicable only to civil servants, but sometimes it is family members or friends taking the bribes. "So I suggest that the law be revised to rectify the situation, Jing said.

Source: China Daily