Corruption in China's science research and development (R&D) institutions is not news, especially in terms of the application and management of R&D budgets. But according to the remarks of Wan Gang, China's minister of science and technology, it is getting worse.

The minister told the press on Friday that a couple of serious cases of R&D budgets being embezzled have been discovered, and he is very "angry, distressed and astounded."

Based on a report released by the China Association for Science and Technology two years ago, only 40 percent of budgets were actually used on scientific research, while the rest was usually spent on unrelated events.

China's annual investment in recent years in R&D was 1 trillion yuan ($163.6 billion) on average. This means more than 600 billion yuan of the budget is misused each year.

Reporters from a TV show, Xinhua Viewpoint, browsed through hundreds of audit reports released in the previous three years. Among the reports, which all focus on the budget enforcement of ministries and State-owned institutions, 39 are related to China's R&D divisions.

These reports show that a large amount of R&D funds are used for entertainment and handing out additional benefits to their staff. The expense account of many R&D institutions and universities is usually filled with items that have nothing to do with research projects, for example, bills of dinners, transportation tickets and overseas travel expenses.

Zou Chenglu, the late biochemist and senior academician from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in 2005 that scientific corruption is the "deadly disease" for China's scientific development. But eight years on, it is still haunting China's scientific community.

The Chinese government has invested heavily in R&D in recent years, triggering a trend in academia - more successful applications of research projects equal more funds and government support for R&D institutions. As a result, these institutions and universities are trying every means to win the favor of the authorities, including bribery.

A lack of transparency is always a hotbed for corruption. In fact, Chinese academia has already formed a solid network of vested interests, and many unspoken rules have become "laws" that both the authorities and R&D institutions are used to obeying. Without a third-party supervision body and an efficient auditing mechanism, the whole process of applying for and using the budget can be easily manipulated by greedy people.

At the same time, it should be noted that raising the salary and benefits of frontline researchers and scholars to a decent level is also crucial. It can largely reduce their incentives to embezzle and misappropriate budgets.