China orders frugality, bans gift-giving at officials' workshops

BEIJING, March 18 (Xinhua) -- China has ordered strict discipline and banned lavish banquets for officials attending workshops.

All Communist Party of China (CPC) officials are required to be honest, self-disciplined and focused on learning, according to a regulation issued by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee on Monday.

CPC officials will have to sleep in school dormitories, eat at school cafeterias and write reports without the help of secretaries during workshops. Those failing to do so will be reprimanded or suspended from the training course, according to the regulation.

No exchanges of banquets and gifts, no group dinners, no chauffeurs and no police escorts for officials' research tours, it says.

Officials are also told to strictly observe workshop schedules and suspend their daily work and business trips during workshops. They are banned from seeking personal favors from their workshop peers.

In China, CPC officials usually attend workshops and training courses offered by Party schools, among other training institutions. Courses are designed to improve the theoretical quality of communist leaders, widen their world vision and strengthen their Party spirit.

Since the election of the new CPC leadership at a Party congress held in November, the CPC has launched high-profile campaigns to stamp out bureaucracy, formalism and lavish spending of public funds.

A number of bureaucracy and formalism-fighting guidelines, which were introduced by a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in December, ask CPC officials to reduce pomp, ceremony and bureaucratic visits and meetings.

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