China vows to step up bribery blacklist

BEIJING - The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has vowed to improve the national online database of people convicted of bribery to better combat corruption.

Song Hansong, director of the SPP's job-related crime department, said the top procuratorate will promote the use of the blacklist system at the central level this year and launch a job-related criminal record archive.

The SPP also plans to improve the bribery database to support batch queries and online reservations for inquiries in a bid to make public inquiries more convenient, Song said.

Launched in February 2012, the database makes names of convicted bribers available across the country for public inquiry.

Anyone discovered to be on the list will likely be disqualified for bidding on government projects and companies may even be forbidden from operating.

Procuratorates at various levels had accepted 4.34 million inquiries as of November last year. More than 2,000 companies and 2,400 individuals on the blacklist have been punished since February 2012, according to SPP figures.