Police in northwest China Wednesday will publicly apologize and offer compensation to a man wrongfully held for alleging a job scandal involving an official's son.

A statement from the public security bureau of Wuzhong City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said its Litong District branch would offer 3,000 yuan (US$454) for psychological injury to Wang Peng, who works for the Gansu provincial library.

The offer followed state compensation of 1,003 yuan early last month, but fell short of Wang's demand for 30,000 yuan.

Zhou Ze, Wang's lawyer, said his client rejected the compensation and would apply for a ruling at the Wuzhong Intermediate People's Court.

The Litong public security bureau would also issue a public apology in a local newspaper, the Legality, on Thursday, said the statement.

The wrongful detention had led to the sacking of the chief and a deputy chief of the Litong district public security bureau last month.

Wang was taken from his office in Gansu's provincial capital, Lanzhou, by police from Wuzhong on November 23 and held for eight days before being released after a public outcry.

Wang, a graduate of Lanzhou University, wrote an anonymous letter to the human resources authority in Ningxia in 2007, saying his roommate, Ma Jingjing, might have cheated in that year's civil service recruitment exam.

Wang and Ma were both Chinese language and literature majors who graduated in 2007.

The letter said Ma had a poor academic record and had failed many tests, but he had scored the highest among almost 500 candidates who applied for a government post in Ningxia's capital, Yinchuan.

The letter was addressed to the State Administration of Civil Service, the Ministry of Supervision, and the Yinchuan municipal committee of the Communist Youth League where Ma was appointed to the much-coveted job.

Ma's parents were senior officials in Ningxia and might have used their power to secure the job for him, Wang had said.

Ma's father, Ma Chonglin, is deputy chief of Ningxia's poverty relief office and his mother, Ding Lanyu, is a top official in Wuzhong.

Failing to have his complaint addressed, Wang wrote more letters and posted some of them online, an act that eventually led to his detention, a police officer in Wuzhong revealed.

With the help of friends, Wang's father posted his son's experience on the Internet and generated a massive public following.

The posting, which spread rapidly on major portals and was followed closely by other media, caused a new public furor over police abuses and the privilege of the "guan er dai," which literally means the second generation of government officials, but is commonly used to describe good-for-nothing children of the powerful.

(Xinhua News Agency January 13 2011)