Beijing, January 2:

China’s prosecutors have set up an on-line blacklist of people convicted of bribing officials, in the country’s latest attempt to fight rampant corruption, state media said on Monday.

The list includes individuals and organizations convicted of bribery or bribery-related crimes since 1997 in the sectors of construction, finance, education, health and government procurement, the Beijing News said.

The paper quoted China’s top prosecution office, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, as saying the public can search for information on the list but only after applying in writing to the prosecutors’ offices. It did not give further details about the accessibility of the site.

Chen Zexian, a research fellow with the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, suggested the prosecutors’ office list bribers in all industrie.

It was unclear how effective the list will be in curbing corruption as bribing and bribe-taking have become common business practices in China.

Officials in China are notorious for using their time in their posts to rake in as much money as possible, as they earn low salaries.

For the bribes, officials often illegally approve land use and development projects or award bids without fair competition.With the lack of democracy or freedom of the press, there are few checks and balances except the Communist Party’s internal monitoring system.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said in September last year that corruption was endemic in China and had grown during its economic reform period, threatening the legitimacy of the government.