The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or national legislature, expelled two members in Beijing Sunday for economic crimes and another for his involvement in a hit-and-run car accident.

The resignation of Zhu Junyi, Zhou Jinhuo and Huang Xuejiu as deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC) was approved by the NPC Standing Committee at the end of a six-day legislative session.

Zhu Junyi, director of the Shanghai Municipal Labour and Social Security Bureau, is accused in an NPC notice of a "grave breach of discipline" in supervising the use of government pension funds.

The 55-year-old labor official is the first Shanghai bureau chief to resign as a national legislator.
 
He is under investigation on charges of receiving bribes and violating state financial rules, sources close to the city's legislature revealed.

At the 12th Shanghai municipal people's congress on Aug. 11, city lawmakers also dismissed Zhu from his bureau post.

More than 100 investigators from Beijing have arrived in Shanghai to probe the corruption case in which money was siphoned off from Shanghai's social security system, which manages over 10 billion yuan (1.25 billion dollars) in funds.

Zhou Jinhuo, former director of Fujian's Bureau of Industry and Commerce, was accused of graft in the relatively wealthy coastal province.

The 57-year-old official tried to flee overseas in June while being investigated for corruption by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

He was caught in southwest border province Yunnan after police tracked a call he made to one of his three mistresses telling her his whereabouts.

On Aug. 2, the Standing Committee of the Fujian Provincial People's Congress in East China decided to sack him.

Huang Xuejiu, 55, secretary of the Mianyang municipal committee of CPC in southwest Sichuan Province, was lambasted for fleeing a road accident scene after colliding with an 18-year-old girl and killing her. Huang was inebriated at the time.

A local property developer surnamed Qiu was made to take the blame when police began investigating the case. Huang was also charged with obstructing the investigation.

The official has been ousted from his city post by the Sichuan provincial people's congress.

They follow a string of senior officials sacked from national legislator posts over the past several months.

Former publicity minister of the provincial committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) of East China's Fujian Province, Jing Fusheng, had his membership of the National People's Congress terminated earlier this month for receiving bribes.

In late June, the former vice naval commander, Wang Shouye, had his membership terminated for moral degeneracy and for extorting bribes.

At the same time, two other legislators, Ge Zheng from Zhejiang Province and Luo Zeqin from Guangdong Province, resigned as national legislators.

Ge was charged with illegal accumulation of funds, and Luo with tax evasion.
 
Last year, China's procurators investigated 8,490 government officials, including eight at the ministerial level.

China's courts convicted 1,932 government officials of graft, six of them were ministerial-level officials.