"There is an urgent need to have legislation on the publication of information, requiring officials' assets to be reported to anti-corruption agencies and made public," he said.

Jiang Ming'an, a law professor at Peking University who also attended the seminar, said that even though publicizing officials' assets has been implemented as a pilot project in some places, many officials reported only a small portion of their assets, having hidden part of their wealth.

"We must firstly deal with such problems in the pilot project before making relevant legislation," he said.

Wang listened attentively to the scholars' suggestion to publicize officials' assets, and agreed with them that any moves in this direction should be carried out "step by step", as the situation is complex.

"He (Wang) said that he took part in the legislation of inheritance tax, and he found that it was difficult to turn the tax into practical law immediately because there are lots of complex issues," Jiang told China Daily on Sunday.

"He said that publicizing officials' assets is also a complex issue which needs thorough research before being turned into law."

An online investigation initiated by China Youth Daily last week showed that 76.6 percent of people expect anti-corruption work to be strengthened in the next decade.

More than 62.8 percent of people agreed that publicizing officials' assets is an effective means to prevent corruption, according to the survey, which polled more than 10,200 netizens, including workers at private and State-owned enterprises, university students and officials.

Anti-corruption efforts have recently been strengthened, and many officials dismissed from their posts.

Five senior officials in South China's Guangdong province have been investigated by the province's anti-corruption authority since late October.

Last month, Lei Zhengfu, Party chief of a district in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, was removed from his post after a sex video that he was in was exposed and widely circulated on the Internet.