Voice from Hong Kong

South China Morning Post: Graft-buster calls for officials' kin to disclose assets 12/03

Former state auditor Li Jinhua has many times called for officials to publicly declare their personal assets. But yesterday he hit hard at the family angle, saying they also needed to quell public "dissatisfaction" by disclosing the assets of their offspring.

Li, vice-chairman of the national committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said in an interview with the People's Daily broadcast on the internet that the growing wealth of top officials' families "is what everybody is most dissatisfied about".

"From the many cases currently coming to light, you can see that a lot of corruption problems are being passed through the sons and daughters," he said.

The mainland's top print media censor is to introduce a new qualification exam for aspiring journalists this year in a push to tighten up on control of media outlets.

Li Dongdong , deputy director at the General Administration of Press and Publication, said yesterday that the new regime would be similar to the qualification exam for civil service jobs, and prospective journalists would have to sit the exam before they could apply for a news-related job.

Li said the new accreditation regime was being introduced in the wake of heightened public discontent over what she called vulgarity, bad taste and unethical news reporting by mainland media.