The Central Party School the training center for high-ranking members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is compiling its first anti-corruption textbook which is expected to be included in the curriculum, officials said.

The compilation of the textbook follows a call by Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CPC, for strengthened ethics education among officials at all levels to root out corruption at the annual work meeting of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection the Party's anti-corruption watchdog last December.

Su Rong, vice-president of the school, said a special team was set up shortly after that meeting and work has basically concluded.

Vice-President Zeng Qinghong, also president of the school, attaches great importance to the compiling of the textbook, Su said.

"This will be the first systematic, formal and exclusive textbook on anti-corruption in the history of the Central Party School," Hou Shaohua, deputy director of the Teaching Department of the school, told China Daily.

Anti-corruption is part of the teaching content in the school, such as special classes with an anti-corruption theme, but there has been no specific textbook, Hou said.

"Ethical and moral education is also part of the textbook," he added.

Many of the corrupt officials, charged with huge sum of briberies or embezzlement, were often found to have led a decadent life.

(China Daily March 20, 2007)