Editor's Note

An increasing number of sex scandals involving Chinese officials are making headlines, both substantiated and fabricated, in part due to the growing role of microblogging in exposing the underbelly of corrupt Chinese officials. And many of them are outed for corruption amid Weibo sex scandals.

Reporter says '5 more sex tapes' in hand

Weibo justice claims official's scalp

Sandals Review

	A district official in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality was sacked on Friday after it was confirmed he was the man featured in a sex video exposed by microbloggers on the Internet. Investigations by the Chongqing Municipal Committee for Discipline Inspection verified that Lei Zhengfu, secretary of the Beibei District Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), featured in the video, which was filmed in 2007.
	A tobacco official in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Han Feng, was found guilty of corruption in 2010 after his diary detailing sexually explicit tales was posted online allegedly by one of his mistresses. He was sentenced to 13 years in December 2010.
	Xie Zhiqiang, director of the health bureau of the city of Liyang, East China's Jiangsu Province was suspended from his post on June 21, 2011, a day after details of his affair with a married woman was exposed to the public via his microblog.
	Web user Dongtaishan posted the photos on a forum of kunming.cn in August 2011, claiming he had found a USB flash disk at a bath center containing pornographic videos taken on January 1, 2007. The disk might belong to an official at the commission, judging by other files in the disk, he wrote. Later, the official turned out to be Cheng Jianjun, a section chief at the Kunming Commission of Development and Reform in the Yunnan Province capital city.
	Tian Hanwen, a senior lawmaker of Ruyang county in Central China's Henan Province has been suspended after sex video images of him were posted online by a woman who accused him of taking advantage of her, local authorities said on August 4, 2011.
	A set of nude photos involving Duan Yizhong, an inspector from the Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were posted online in January.
	Some 120 photos of their group sex were leaked online in earlier in August. A human flesh search engine turned up the identity of one of the three men in the picture, naming him as Wang Yu, deputy secretary of the Youth League Committee of Hefei University in Anhui.

Concerns

Fake sex photo plot targets official
A local official whose job it is to ensure a safe working environment reported to police Wednesday that he has been targeted by blackmailers using Photoshopped sex photos, an increasingly common way of preying on officials in China.

Different Voices

What kind of fun people are having behind closed doors is none of other people's business. Both society and the law should not interfere.------Fang Gang, a sexologist at Beijing Forestry University

Government officials are also human, they have their hobbies and shortcomings. It will make them more comfortable if they can act like ordinary people.------Yang Yuze, a news commentator

The majority of government officials are well-behaved, but there is a small amount of black sheep.------Jiao Xinsheng, a professor at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law

An official being afraid of the Internet is no bad thing. It helps them focus on serving the people and behave themselves.------Zhang Bin, deputy director of the general office of the Gansu provincial Party committee

Viewpoints

GT editorial

Weibo anti-corruption a milestone for reform
In recent years, China's disciplinary authorities at various levels have ferreted out many corrupt officials. But anti-corruption efforts through evidence provided by microbloggers have been especially impressive. Weibo's pressure on official ecology is unprecedented, since microblogging represents ubiquitous public supervision.

Chinese Media Digest

Yu Deqing, a regular contributor to Beijing News, considers the Internet as one of the best anti-corruption tools the government has at its disposal.

Chinese blogger Han Han called for the government to speed up its anti-corruption reforms, which have proven a distant second to Weibo.

"Lei's case had been concealed for five years, which shows the ineffectiveness of the existing system," he wrote in an opinion piece for the Beijing News.

"Anti-corruption plays an important role, but the system is full of loopholes," echoed the Yunnan Information Daily.
More