Lian Rongguan, a former bank official and deputy mayor of Renqiu City in north China's Hebei Province, was arrested at his hide-out in the coastal city of Yantai, in eastern Shandong Province, last month after he fled with a huge amount of public money.

Lian is one of over 400 runaways who have been captured by Chinese authorities in a new campaign to hunt former government officials who have pocketed public money and possessions and gone into exile.

The new round of hunting for these runaways, the second in the past five years since 2001, was triggered by a 2005 report by the anti-corruption bureau of the Supreme People's Procuracy, which says more than 4,000 grafted officials were in exile.

The failure to arrest these officials swiftly may be detrimental to the efforts to create a harmonious socialist society in China the foundation of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), says the report.

In fact, it has been a regular job for procurators and police to chase after these runaway officials. The authorities captured 596 suspects in 2003, 614 in 2004, and 703 in 2005, respectively, according to a report by Jia Chunwang, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuracy at the recent parliamentary session.

So far, the authorities have published the names of these people on the Internet, which has obliged many runaways to give themselves up and encouraged the general public to tip off law-enforcement departments.

In Henan Province, central China, local authorities arrested 28suspects only 20 days after they publicized a list of 222 names.

This time, the authorities have published the cost of capturing these hiding suspects. It costs 10,000 yuan (US$1,250) of public money to capture one of these runaways - it may cost 10 times higher for major cases.

"Some cases may even cost 1 million yuan (US$125,000) or more," said Wu Heping, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security, recently.

In some cities, people have been paid 3,000 yuan (US$375) after they gave information to the authorities about a suspect.

Meanwhile, the authorities have confirmed that among the 4,000 runaways, approximately 500 have gone into exile overseas, far less than the figures reported by some media.

"They may have confused the number of corrupt officials in hiding and the number of those in exile," said a procurator from the Supreme People's Procuracy.

"We will chase after those who taken a large amount of public money and have caused serious negative impacts at any cost," he said

(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2006)