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Mimi Lau

What price for a seat on Guangdong' s political advisory body?
If court documents in the corruption trial of disgraced provincial United Front Work Department chief Zhou Zhenhong are any guide, the positions were bought and sold for anywhere between 150,000 yuan (HK$189,300) and 945,000 yuan in 2008.
The documents came to light on the weekend as the provincial authorities announced that the delayed meeting of the Guangdong committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference would take place on February 7.
The four-day meeting was originally set to start on January 23.
The southern province has been hit hard by the country's ongoing anti-graft campaign, with more than 70 senior officials - including the advisory body's head Zhu Mingguo - detained in corruption investigations last year.
Zhu, as well as former Maoming party boss Liang Yimin, were formally sacked from the provincial party committee on Saturday at the end of a Guangdong party committee plenum.
The advisory body is due to name its new chief at the coming annual meeting.
Zhou, who was given a two-year suspended death sentence last year for corruption, pocketed money from 33 people, including five chairmen of developers based in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, between 2004 and 2009.
He was found guilty of 173 counts of bribery by a court in Xinyang in Henan province in February, a decision upheld by the province's higher court in April.
Some businesspeople covet the positions on the advisory body for the doors they open to the corridors of power. The prices paid were listed in documents published on the website of Guizhou's law society.
In one case a businessman bought a seat for his son.
Meanwhile at the party committee meeting on Saturday, Guangdong party chief Hu Chunhua called on the provincial authorities to take action to develop Guangdong's innovation sectors as part of a three-year action plan, the China News Service reported, without offering details of the plan.
Both Hu and governor Zhu Xiaodan were cautious about the province's economic outlook in the year ahead.
"The economy is still fluctuating and is uncertain, and there is a lot of downward pressure," the report quoted the governor as saying.
"We should not overlook the risks in the property market as well as in other sectors of the economy."
Dr Peng Peng, from the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said the provincial party plenum was more about setting the principles and tone for the coming year and he expected more details would be rolled out in government work report at next month's gatherings of Guangdong's consultative conference and people's congress.
Lin Jiang, professor of economics at Sun Yat-sen University, agreed, adding that he expected more breakthrough measures on Guangdong's free-trade zone to be rolled out next month.


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For sale: seats on Guangdong's advisory body

Guangdong governor Zhu Xiaodan has warned that the province should not overlook risks in the property market. Photo: Reuters

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China

Court documents detail how one senior official pocketed bribes to get businesspeople onto the provincial consultative conference


Court documents detail how one senior official pocketed bribes to get businesspeople onto the provincial consultative conference.
