Calls mount to reinvest illegal Chinese wealth in schemes to improve livelihood

As the central government boasts the successes of the anti-corruption crusade, the public is showing a keen interest in the whereabouts of the confiscated money.

Calls are mounting for it to be allocated towards improving people's livelihoods, especially given Beijing's push to boost domestic consumption to pull the world's second largest economy out of the doldrums.

For years, corrupt officials were sitting on an astonishing amount of cash, gold, real estate, antiques and other luxuries. The Supreme People's Court has confiscated 55.3 billion yuan (HK$70 billion) of ill-gotten gains over the past five years, the Legal Daily reported in November.

Beijing is also trying to claw back dirty money hidden overseas, and is boosting international collaboration to locate and repatriate the corrupt officials who took the money with them. Global Financial Integrity, a US-based organisation that tracks illicit financial flows, estimates that US$1.078 trillion in corrupt funds flooded out of China between 2001 and 2011.

Chen Jiping, party secretary of the China Law Society, said on the sidelines of a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on Friday that all the confiscated money would eventually go to the central government's coffers, .

Yang Xueyi, a former party secretary of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, told reporters on Friday that the government should let the public know how the money was spent. "Though it's part of the national spending, it should be listed separately."