1st Ld-Writethru: China to improve institutional mechanism for anti-corruption: spokeswoman

A spokeswoman for China's national legislature said Wednesday China would further build institutional mechanism to crack down on corruption.

China has revised the Budget Law to better manage government revenues and spending so as to strengthen supervision on power, said Fu Ying, spokeswoman for the third session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC).

The law, revised last year, defines the government budget in four parts: the general budget, the budget for government-managed funds, the budget for state-owned assets and the budget for social insurance funds. All the four parts would be subject to supervision.

The country is also considering to revise the Criminal Law to enhance efforts to curb embezzlement and bribery, she said.

Offering bribes to officials' relatives would be added to the list of the bribery crime, she said.

As for international cooperation, the spokeswoman said that China will join the efforts to build an international anti-corruption network and is mulling its own legislation on assisting international criminal justice.

China, a signee to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, has pledged to advance global cooperation to fight against corruption within the frameworks such as APEC and G20, Fu said.

"The main idea is to make full use of international mechanism and laws to ensure corrupt fugitives to be punished no matter where they hide," she said.

The NPC annual session will start to convene on Thursday. It is widely expected that anti-corruption would be one major topic at NPC discussions.

President Xi Jinping vowed to target high-ranking "tigers" as well as low-ranking "flies" in the nationwide anti-corruption drive. The sweeping campaign has brought down a number of Communist Party of China or state leaders, such as Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou, Ling Jihua and Su Rong. Endi