Du was also suspended as secretary of the Qingdao Municipal CPC Committee in Shandong, east China.

Yan Qijun, president of the Shandong Federation of Trade Unions, has been appointed new Party chief of the booming coastal city of Qingdao.

Yan, 56, a Shandong native, joined the CPC in January, 1972. Yan became Party chief of the province's Zibo Municipal CPC Committee in 1997 before assuming presidency of the union federation in 2003.

The CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection is investigating Du.

The commission found clues of Du's misbehavior after receiving reports from the public during an official routine inspection.

Du was born in March, 1950, in Longkou, Shandong and joined the CPC in December, 1972.

Du's sacking is another signal of the central government's hard stand against official malpractice and corruption.

Earlier this month, Beijing's former Vice Mayor, Liu Zhihua, who was sacked in June for corruption, was expelled from the CPC.

In September, Shanghai former Party chief Chen Liangyu was sacked for alleged involvement in a social security fund scandal.

He became the country's highest-ranking official to fall in the latest anti-corruption campaign by the central government.

Later, Qiu Xiaohua, a former statistics chief, was removed from the National Bureau of Statistics for his suspected involvement in the 10 billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) Shanghai social security fund fraud.

In 2005, 115,000 Party members received disciplinary punishment, accounting for 0.16 percent of the Party's total.

Among them, 11,071 have been expelled from the Party. A total of 7,279 cases have been transferred to judicial authorities for criminal investigations.