China's school administrators have been given a lesson in commercial corruption, which revealed "kickbacks" is the term to learn when it comes to publishing English textbooks.

 

The Ministry of Education announced on Tuesday that over the past six years it had uncovered 577 cases of commercial corruption in the nation's schools and universities.

 

657 people had been involved in the illicit acquisition of 70 million yuan (US$9.22 million), with 414 of these being prosecuted.

 

The most common case saw the accused accepting kickbacks from textbook stores or publishers, producers of school instruments and suppliers of daily items to students, the ministry said. Others were bribed by companies seeking favorable treatment in securing school construction contracts.

 

According to earlier reports, Jiangsu Province was a particular hot zone with 109 of its 115 colleges and universities being involved in commercial bribery.

 

Last year, Jiangsu's prosecutors, after two years of investigations, identified around 20 million yuan (US$2.63 million) in illegal earnings received by college officials as kickbacks from publishing houses or bookstores.

 

Textbooks were sold to students at the cover prices, but schools received institutional kickbacks worth 15 to 25 percent of the price from bookstores, the amount rising to 35 percent if the books came directly from the publishers.

 

English textbooks were the most "lucrative", given the subject's compulsory nature and popularity among students.

 

Each student usually bought at least 200 yuan (US$26.3) of English textbooks at college. If Jiangsu took a 15-percent kickback for each of 1.2 million college students, the bribe amounts would add up to 36 million yuan (US$4.7 million), said Wu Jianchun, deputy head of Nanjing's Jianye District People's Procuratorate.

 

As a consequence, schools have been forced to tighten supervision of purchasing departments and improve accounting systems, the ministry said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2007)