CHINA'S judicial corruption fighters are extending their targets to bribe-givers, as prosecutors expand a blacklist of those who give bribes in all industries. It's part of the fight to root out corruption.

The blacklist database, covering all those convicted of bribery by Chinese courts since 1997, when an amendment to the Criminal Law took effect, was opened for public scrutiny earlier this month. It links all local and provincial networks.

Individuals or organizations can refer to the blacklist of bribe cases, to see if the people or companies they deal with or may deal with have any record of bribery.

The purpose of the blacklist database is to curb job-related crimes and business bribery.

"It intends to eradicate the hidden rule of power-for-money deals and prevent corruption by curbing bribe offering," it says.

Foreigners and international companies convicted of bribery by Chinese courts are also in the database.

Earlier last month, the Shanghai prosecutor's office approved the arrest of four employees of the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd, including Stern Hu, an Australian citizen of Chinese origin and general manager of the company's Shanghai office. Charges include illegally obtaining business secrets and bribery.

An official with the job-related crime prevention department of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said it alarmed people who were thinking of offering bribes, as their names and acts would remain in the database and be exposed to the public. The record cannot be deleted or changed.

Free inquiries can be made at all levels of prosecutors' across China with an ID card and a written application letter specifying the aim of the inquiry.

The object of inquiry could be people or companies in any regions on the Chinese mainland since all blacklist databases form a national network.

Previously, most of these bribery databases in different regions were not linked and people had to travel or write inquiry letters for cross-provincial inquiries.

The regulation says prosecutors must reply to inquiries within three days, and provide relevant information, including the date a bribe was offered, the sum, the date of conviction and other related information about the person or company with which the applicant considers doing business.

Judicial organizations should not be involved in handling the result of inquiry, it says.

Professor Huang Zongliang of Beijing University told Xinhua: "It takes two to make a deal. Corruption cannot be wiped out if bribers are always there to lure."

Huang said: "Previously, people taking bribes had always been a priority target in corruption fighting as bribe takers were mostly powerful people or officials who had influence. However, bribe offering should be severely punished as well.

"Money and power are easily colluding with each other, and the crackdown upon briber-givers is an important part of fighting corruption,.

In 2004 Huang gave a lecture on capacity-building and corruption fighting in the ruling Communist Party of China to the 25-member Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, the highest-ranking Party officials.

The SPP initiated the blacklist in January 2006. It covered bribe-givers in five sectors, including construction, finance, medical service, education and government procurement.

The list has been expanded to bribe-givers in of all industries after September 1, as bribery is common in land expropriation, housing relocation, urban law enforcement, power grid restructuring, energy development and rural construction.

Construction

The urban construction sector has always been vulnerable to bribery.

The SPP said Thursday that bribery in urban construction projects accounted for nearly 40 percent of all the 6,277 business bribery cases Chinese prosecutors handled in the first six months of the year. They involved 918 million yuan (US$134 million) in total.

More than 77 percent of the cases involved charges of "taking bribes" and 19 percent with "paying bribes," the SPP said.

In 2009, prosecutors nationwide stepped up checks on bribery in of construction, land transfer, property trade, insurance and bank credit as the public voiced strong dissatisfaction that these industries were largely overlooked.

China's Criminal Law calls for punishing those who offer bribes worth more than 10,000 yuan to seek illegal gains, offering bribes to more than three people, to Party, government officials or judiciary staff, thus causing great damage to state or social interests,

Those convicted could face prison terms from under five years to live imprisonment.

But penalties could be reduced or waived if suspects voluntarily confess.

Taking bribes would receive heavier penalties than offering bribes in China. Chinese law says that government employees who take bribes worth more than 100,000 yuan would be sentenced to over 10 years in prison and those who commit more serious crimes might face life imprisonment or execution.

The CPC Central Committee made clear in a work plan on building a corruption-prevention system (2008-2012): "The aim of setting up a blacklist database on commercial bribery is to take illegal trading, especially bribe offering, as an important factor for not granting market admittance."

The SPP official said the database was to show the "heavy cost of offering bribes" and promote honest and credible business operation, orderly market competition and social justice.

The SPP ordered that all provincial prosecutors should have all the convicted bribers blacklisted for public inquiry in 2006.

Eastern China's Zhejiang Province established the country's first provincial bribery blacklist in 2003, focusing on the construction.

A total of 60,748 companies and 63,179 individuals made inquiries in the previous Zhejiang database of five industries. A total of 102 offenders were identified, according to prosecutors.

In March 2009, a construction company was eliminated from a tender when the prosecutor of Beilun District, Ningbo City, at the request of the tenderer, found that its legal representative surnamed Lai had been convicted of bribery in 2007.