For sale: seats on Guangdong's advisory body
Court documents detail how one senior official pocketed bribes to get businesspeople onto the provincial consultative conference
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.