When Han Guosen decided to report the corrupt misuse of public lands by a village leader in Hebei Province's city of Zhuozhou, he encountered a network of bureaucracy. He spent hours searching for a website where he could file his complaint.

"It was a long, time-consuming process," Han told the Global Times.

In theory, the online process for Han and many others seeking to report corruption became easier on Friday, with the addition of a link to report corruption on China's major online news portals.

The hyperlink, which says "welcome your supervision, please report truthfully," has been placed on mainstream news websites such as xinhuanet.com, people.com.cn, qq.com and sina.com.cn.

However, as yet, what happens after people submit their complaints remains shrouded in mystery, prompting some veteran whistle-blowers to question whether the new links are much more than a makeover that would require real transparency to be useful.

Behind the link

After clicking on the link and accepting the terms of use, whistle-blowers are directed to a page listing the graft reporting sites of five government agencies - the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Central Organization Department (COD) of the CPC Central Committee, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Land and Resources.

According to the terms of use, each agency handles different kinds of graft. The CCDI, for example, deals with claims regarding Party organizations and members who violate Party or government regulations, and the COD deals with complaints regarding the hiring and management of officials above the county- and division-levels. The terms also stipulate that tipsters must offer genuine evidence and report the issue objectively, and suggest they file complaints under their real names.

News portals reached by the Global Times, including xinhuanet.com, china.com.cn and sina.com.cn, said they don't track how many Web users have clicked on the link. Staff members from both xinhuanet.com and china.com.cn told the Global Times that they "just received orders from the top" to place the hyperlink on their front page.

"All we need to do is to promote the link," a staff member from xinhuanet.com said.

Government agencies contacted by the Global Times could not provide statistics on how much traffic was directed from the news websites to their reporting pages as of press time.

Lackluster reception

Tian Ye, an engineer with an architecture company in Ordos, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, told the Global Times that he was excited about the new method to combat graft. "The link is definitely a handy tool that will motivate me to report corruption," Tian said. "Before this, I didn't know I could access the agencies' reporting websites so easily."

Wang Wenzhang, a professor at the Institute of Social Development at Peking University, told the Global Times that the link encourages people to report corruption at the grass-roots level. "The people's supervision is the most effective and an essential way to spot and combat corruption," Wang said. "The link on major websites facilitates this process and is thus a meaningful add-on."

The official Sina Weibo account of xinhuanet.com published a post to introduce the link, which only received some 50 reposts and 20 comments, despite the fact that the account has more than 1.3 million followers.

A post about the add-on by a Sina employee received 84 comments, with many of them asking, "Where is the link?"

The link, described as "almost invisible" by many Weibo users, is usually of the same font size and as other text on the news sites, albeit in a different color.

Better than existing methods?

Although the link leads to a detailed explanation of the five agencies' responsibilities and basic instructions on how to file a complaint, it ultimately directs whistle-blowers to online reporting systems that the government bodies have had for years.

These methods have traditionally been eschewed in favor of publicizing cases directly on the Internet, either by whistle-blower reports, or "human flesh searches," which involved thousands of Web users working in concert to unearth details on a particular individual.

Among the most high-profile recent examples was the case of Yang Dacai, the "smiling official" who became the focus of online attention after he was photographed smiling at the scene of a fatal road accident in Shaanxi Province. The "human flesh search" that followed led to the exposure of scores of pictures of Yang wearing various expensive luxury watches and ultimately his sacking.

Whistle-blowers remain unconvinced the links are a better method.

Han, for example, told the Global Times that he would not use it.

"If it leads to the official reporting website, it leads to a dead end," Han said, adding that he had been waiting to hear the result of the complaint he filed on the CCDI website for almost a year.

This, he said, forced him to visit the CCDI office in person last week. "The online reporting system makes me feel frustrated and it's pointless," he said.

It would take years and major overhauls of the system to solve the problem, Wang said, but any small steps such as adding this link are welcomed.

Li Dexin, an influential citizen journalist who founded and operates the famous whistle-blowing website "Public Opinion Supervision," agreed with Han, calling the link "superfluous frills."

"It's an unimportant add-on that doesn't solve the fundamental problem," he said.

Li, who wrote a report on his website this week that forced two corrupt officials in Shandong Province to resign, said pressures from media and the public via Weibo are the best means to fight corruption.

Li said he didn't report the Shandong officials' wrongdoings through the link on news sites or directly on the agencies' reporting pages.

"My claim will never yield any results and the agency might leak my identity," he said. "Straightforward exposure online is much more effective." However, he suggested the agencies set a deadline for handling whistle-blowers' claims.

"With a looming deadline one or two months away, the inspection bodies would no longer be able to ignore the complaints and would be forced to work more efficiently," he said.

Li also suggested that property disclosure and tight supervision when hiring government staff would be better methods to combat graft.