According to a national audit released this week, Chinese officials have misused $35 billion in government money in the past 11 months of 2009.
The audit is the latest indication of the amount of widespread corruption in government agencies.
The examination, carried out by the National Audit Office said it surveyed nearly 100,000 government departments and state-owned companies, and that more than 1,000 officials were facing prosecution or disciplinary action because of the audits.
Auditors said government officials were involved in almost anything one can think which involved corruption, from money laundering and issuing fraudulent loans to cheating the government through the sale or purchase of state land or mining rights.
“Criminals are now more intelligent, and covert,’’ Liu Jiayi, the director of the National Audit Office, was quoted as saying in the state-run news media.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao hailed the work of the auditors yesterday and called on them to monitor government projects.
Every year Beijing announces new anticorruption drives, new laws, and new policies aimed at dealing with the problem. But every year the scale of fraud seems enormous, particularly in a country where the average person earns less than $50 a week.
