A senior official has been dismissed from all his positions within the Communist Party of China (CPC) in southwest China's Yunnan Province on corruption charges, sources from the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the Ministry of Supervision said december 7.

With the approval of the CPC Central Committee, the CCDI also suggested Yunnan's Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee remove Sun Xiaohong, president of the Higher People's Court in Yunnan, from his post as president and as a deputy to the 9th provincial People's Congress.

Sun has been convicted of smuggling two Audi limousines into China, one of which he used for his own purposes, in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Customs estimate indicates an evasion of 637,000 yuan in duty in the two smuggling cases.

During the 1992-1997 period, while acting as president of the Intermediate People's Court of Kunming City, Sun allowed the court to conceal more than 77 million yuan of income, and in the 1992-1995 period, he approved the distribution of over 1.5 million yuan of procedural fees as bonuses.

A notice issued by the CCDI called on the younger generation of officials to learn from Sun's case, and to stay clear-headed so as to better serve the public.