Chinese corruption site brought to its knees

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 19 Dec 2007 at 07:47

A Chinese government website encouraging citizens to report corruption crashed on its first day, under the weight of too many hits.

China's National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, formed in September after a string of high-profile scandals involving government officials, launched its official website on Tuesday, but a massive influx of users brought the site to its knees.

By the afternoon, the site could not be accessed, the Beijing Youth Daily says. It quoted an official as saying that the "number of visitors was too large".

The site was up later on Tuesday, the paper says, and its discussion board at that time had 12 pages of comments left by users, ranging from allegations of collusion between driving schools and government traffic bureaux to criticism of the website itself for being "done relatively crudely".

This morning the site was again down for a time, but now appears to be functioning properly.

China has called on citizens to blow the whistle on rampant corruption in business and government, but investigators struggle to rein in officials who permit little direct oversight and do not have to answer directly to the public.

China will draft a five-year plan to tackle corruption, the official People's Daily says in a separate report, citing notes from a meeting of the country's decision-making Politburo on Tuesday.