China has dealt with 21,889 cases of commercial bribery involving 5.276 billion yuan (US$676 million) since it started a clean-up campaign in 2005, according to the latest official statistics.

"Good results have been achieved, but commercial bribery remains a big problem in certain fields, with bribing methods harder to detect," He Yong, head of a leading group of the central authorities for handling commercial bribery, said at a national work conference here on Saturday.

"Most of the cases involve work staff of government organs, who take advantage of their job positions to seek illegal gains," said He, also deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The campaign against commercial bribery mainly targeted construction projects, land transfers, property transactions, pharmaceutical sales, government procurement contracts as well as resources exploitation and sales, according to the conference.

Fields such as bank loans, publication distribution, sports, environmental protection, and telecom and power industries were also scrutinized.

He said the next step is to intensify investigations of civil servants who take bribes during licensing, law enforcement and court trial procedures.

He called on anti-bribery officials to devote more efforts to investigating cases that trample on the public's vital interests.

"The government will further open administrative affairs to public scrutiny, and develop an effective long-term mechanism to fight commercial bribery," he said.

Commercial bribery usually refers to bribes from companies and often involves a firm paying money to government officials for special favors.

(Xinhua News Agency April 29, 2007)