Corruption Rattles China's Communist Party

Four Chinese judges have been charged with taking bribes to fix cases, a news report said Friday, following a warning by President Hu Jintao that corruption is threatening China's well-being.

The cases in the eastern province of Anhui come amid a widening, high-profile corruption scandal in Shanghai, but there was no indication the cases are related.

Zhang Zimin, former president of the Intermediate People's Court in Fuyang, a city in Anhui, stood trial Wednesday on charges that he took more than 1.3 million yuan (US$162,000), the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Zhang was accused of taking bribes to arrange jobs and intervene in trials, Xinhua said. It said no verdict had been reached.

A Communist Party official and former judge in Fuyang, Shang Jun, is charged with taking bribes of 906,500 yuan (US$114,000), Xinhua said. It said two other former judges, Liu Jiayi and Wang Jianmin, face similar charges.

The government has punished thousands of officials in an multiyear effort to stop widespread corruption that threatens to erode public acceptance of communist rule.

A senior prosecutor said this week that more than 17,500 officials have been punished this year for corruption.

"We see the fight against corruption as a top priority, a pressing task that has great influence on the overall development of the country," state media quoted President Hu Jintao as saying at an anti-corruption conference this week.

Also this week, the government said two senior officials in charge of managing Shanghai's government-owned assets were under investigation in a corruption scandal that has already brought down the city's Communist Party secretary.

The two were among dozens of officials and businessmen reportedly implicated in the scandal over alleged illicit investments of Shanghai pension and housing funds.

Shanghai's party secretary, Chen Liangyu, was fired last month in connection with the scandal over alleged misuse of more than 3 billion yuan (US$380 million) in pension funds.

The government has announced one arrest, tycoon Zhang Rongkun, whose Fuxi Investment company was alleged to have used pension funds for toll roads and other projects.

Also Friday, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper reported that five more judges had been questioned by anti-corruption investigators in the southern financial center of Shenzhen.

The newspaper reported last week that the vice president of Shenzhen's Intermediate People's Court and his ex-wife, also a court employee, were detained along with five other senior judges.