War on China corruption follows the philanderers

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As China's booming economy flourished, so did its opportunities for graft and corrupt Chinese officials acquired a long list of ill-gotten gains: pure-gold statues of Mao, so much cash it was measured by the metric tonne and, for some, mistresses.

But adultery, it turns out, can be as bad for a career as it is for a marriage.

Of Chinese corruption cases referred to trial in the past year, nearly 20 per cent featured extra-marital affairs, according to an analysis published last week in Chinese state media.

"Behind a successful man may be a woman's silent contributions. And behind a corrupted official may be one, or even a group, of dangerous lovers," the Xinhua news agency remarked. Those female lovers, it said, "have become pioneers" in China's anti-corruption efforts.

It is a glimpse into how a culture of licentiousness has become the undoing of a growing number of bureaucrats, as President Xi Jinping oversees a campaign to root out enough rot to ensure the Communist Party does not collapse in on itself. That effort has taken a number of novel turns, with a polished website for anonymous informants and a new system of internal competition designed to encourage aggressive investigation into wrongdoing.

For a number of officials, however, corruption has been discovered at the intersection of money and lust.

Setting aside moral arguments – some in China suggest a man who can't be trusted by his spouse likely can't be trusted by the state – mistresses have proven key in ferreting out who is amassing illicit wealth.

Some women have reportedly been partners in graft, using their proximity to power to peddle influence. The mistress of a railway official in southern China's Kunming was sentenced to 15 years in prison for her role; the official received a deferred death sentence.

Others have proven to be important sources for investigators, with knowledge of valuable information on misdeeds.

In some cases, the revelation of affairs has been enough to raise alarms. In an effort to end a fractious breakup with a mistress, one environmental protection official in Shanxi province signed a contract this year in which he agreed to pay her the equivalent of $71,000. The Chinese president, by contrast, reportedly makes just over $20,000 a year. How, then, did a local official have sufficient funds for a payment of that size?

It was a question that cost the official, among many others, his job. So many corrupt officials have been purged in Shanxi that half of provincial leadership positions now reportedly stand vacant.

The crackdown led by Mr. Xi has cast a broad net, sending investigators across the country and into local governments, party offices, state-owned energy and mining companies, and the Chinese operations of multinational auto and pharmaceutical firms.

The fear it has created has been evident in a series of suicides among officials – some 30 this year alone. Further alarm has been raised by some of the tactics used. Last year, at least three people died in interrogation by anti-corruption investigators. One of them drowned. Another was left with a heavily bruised body and a blue face. All three were detained in the extra-legal shuanggui system used by the Communist Party, and its Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which has led the recent corruption crackdown. As a party organ, it does not have to answer to the courts.

Its methods are cause for "worry, because there is no law to restrict them," said Si Weijiang, a lawyer who represented one of those men who died during interrogations and who has spoken with families of all three.

The aggressive interrogation tactics are among a wide array of tools investigators are using. Others include scouring foreign records for evidence of dirty money being secreted out of China, and opening new ways for people to report allegations of wrongdoing. Each of China's 31 provincial disciplinary inspection agencies now welcomes anonymous online tips, as does the national commission.

The Central Commission has been given an expanded mandate to examine not just local governments but state-owned enterprises and universities.

Investigating teams have also fanned out across the country, in one-month shock-and-awe exercises designed to bring down large numbers of corrupt officials in a short time. Those teams are led by directors many of them brought back from retirement, whose performance is closely scrutinized in a new system designed to reward convictions.

"The evaluation question for those inspection teams is, how many problems or clues did you find? How many major issues did your team identify?" said Ren Jianming, a professor at Beijing's Beihang University who is among the country's top experts on corruption. Leaders of teams who underperform are quickly replaced, he said.

"This is a strong motivation."

That may be an understatement. In 2013, the number of people probed by investigators stood at least 10 times higher than the year before, according to research done at Peking University.

In part, that's because rotten apples tend to exist in bunches. "Quite a number of cases were discovered by investigating other cases," Prof. Ren said. "It's like a rolling snowball, growing bigger and bigger."

New technology hasn't hurt, either– particularly with the tawdriest of revelations. Pictures of male officials in flagrante delicto, for example, spread at astonishing speed through social media, and quickly end up with corruption investigators.

"As the Internet, smartphones and even spy cameras have become popular and convenient, sex photos have become easier to disclose," said Communist Party historian and critic Zhang Lifan.

"In the past, few officials were punished for such cases."

With a report from Yu Mei