Twenty judicial department cars were reportedly used during a provincial official son's wedding in Changsha, Hunan Province.

The original accusation was made in an on-line thread on tianya.cn, a Chinese-language message board, which alleged that Wang Qinsheng, a deputy director of Justice Department of Hunan Province, used 20 government-owned cars during his son's wedding, which was held at the Saint-Tropez Hotel on January 3.

The post included 12 pictures showing the license plates from areas around the province including Zhuzhou, Changde, Zhangjiajie and Chenzhou. Written on the cars are the Chinese characters meaning "Judicial Department."

An official surnamed Zhuo from the Zhangjiajie judicial bureau told the Global Times that some of the cars belong to the judicial bureaus in Zhangjiajie.

"But it's not from our bureau. The car may belong to the township bureau in Zhanjiajie," Zhuo said, adding that officials are looking into the case.

Another anonymous official from the Zhuzhou judicial bureau said that the car is not from his bureau. "Though it has a Zhuzhou car plate, the car is actually under the control of the provincial Justice Department," he told the Global Times on Saturday.

A secretary with the Justice Department of Hunan Province said that he did not know about the use of the government-owned cars in Wang's wedding. The secretary refused to transfer the call to Wang and other office numbers of the department were not answered.

In an interview with Yang-cheng Evening News, Wang said that he knew nothing about the use of government cars during the wedding.

In 2010, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China stipulated that officials should not use government cars for private uses like weddings, practicing driving skills and picking up children.

According to a China Youth Daily report from June 29, a Guangzhou citizen named Qu Shaokun has blown the whistle on more than 100 government-owned cars that were used for private purposes over the past six years.

Zhou Xiaozheng, a professor of sociology from the Renmin University of China, said that the ultimate way to prohibit  the private use of government cars is to fully implement the rule of law and make officials practice their power according to the law and Constitution.

"We should avoid the concentration of power and make sure it is properly supervised," noted Zhou.