The two-year campaign has been initiated by the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

The Supreme People's Procuratorate initiates a two-year campaign to root-out corruption at a local level, with China's rural areas the new focus. [Photo: blog.163.com]

Gao Bo with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says the fight against grassroots 'flies' is urgently needed.

"We're expecting the anti-corruption drive will help increase reforms, as well as improve supervision and make policies better implemented so as to gain more public recognition."

Over the past 2-years, Chinese prosecutors have investigated around 29-thousand lower-level government officials in townships and villages.

Part of the crackdown has been focused on rooting-out officials stealing money which had been earmarked for low-income households and orphans.

In the latest case, a low-ranking official with an agricultural service center in Beijing's Changping District stole around 800-million yuan for his personal investments.

Xin Ming with the CPC's Party School says it's these so-called 'flies' that represent the major concern for the Party.

"Grass-roots officials are closer to the common people. As such, their misdeeds tend to gain much more attention among the locals than high-ranked officials."

The crackdown on corruption began in 2012.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in taking office, vowed to root-out both "tigers," or high-ranking officials, as well as "flies," or lower-level administrators.

However, corruption cases involving grassroots officials in rural areas have been increasing over the past 3-years.

Professor Xin Ming says loopholes in the supervision system need to be addressed.

"These crimes result not only from the poor quality of some cadres, but also a lack of supervision. If we fail to address the problems, our policies will not work. That will undermine the public confidence of the government."

The Supreme People's Procuratorate says the new 2-year campaign should also help create transparent elections at the village level.

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