100,000 officials were paid though they did no work

More than 100,000 "phantom employees" of provincial governments have been cleaned out of civil servant teams in Hebei, Sichuan, Henan and Jilin provinces since a national campaign was launched last year, requiring stricter measures to keep government teams clean and efficient, experts said.

In Hebei province, more than 55,000 officials in government units and staff members of public institutes were found to be getting paid, even though they no longer worked there, as part of the national Mass Line Campaign that has targeted corruption and bureaucracy, Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday.

"We have taken a series of measures to expose such officials as a major way to make relations between the CPC members and the public closer," Zhao Wenhai, deputy head of the province's Finance Bureau, told Xinhua.