The State Development Planning Commission (SDPC) has decided to open a nation-wide telephone line for tip-offs on price --- "12358" --- in order to rectify and standardize the market price system and give full play to the tip-offs on price as social supervision mechanism.
As reported the SDPC gave a special order to local authorities of price in September 1998, requiring departments at all levels concerned to open up telephone numbers to the society for price reporting.
China has so far set up 2,703 report centers, and made open 3,215 report telephones. Last year saw a total of 190,000 cases of price reports handled by departments at all levels and retrieved a sum-total of 404 million yuan from illegal price violation with 267 million yuan returned to consumers.