Kiss-and-tell Stories Expose Chinese Corruption

Mistresses can damage officials' careers as well as their marriages, anti-corruption investigators in China have warned.

Pillow talk which is passed on in interviews is offering crucial details of illicit dealings, according to the deputy director of the anti-corruption bureau in Dongguan, a major industrial city in the south.

"At least 80% of corrupt officials exposed in Dongguan had mistresses who gave us important information that we did not possess," Zhou Yuefeng told the China Daily newspaper.

Beijing has repeatedly pledged to prioritize fighting corruption, one of the major causes of public resentment and potential unrest. Earlier this week it said that the situation was "grim" and the task "arduous" as it announced a five-year plan to tackle the problem.

Proposals include more public hearings and professional consultation to improve transparency, as well as stricter internal investigation by the Communist party.

"Resolutely punishing and effectively preventing corruption relates to whether the people support you or not and to the Party's life-and-death survival," said the document.

Ren Jiaming, professor of public policy at Tsinghua University and a specialist on corruption issues said the government has emphasized anti-corruption moves. "From our research we can see some anti-corruption as being effective - the tax problem has much been reduced."

But he added that wider changes, such as political reform, were needed to tackle the underlying causes. Others argue that punishing bribe-givers as well as bribe-takers is necessary to curb the practice.

China's public servants regulation, which took effect a year ago, states that officials must be dismissed if found to have mistresses.

Zhou said receiving bribes in the form of share dividends was also common among corrupt officials in Dongguan. He cited the case of the former head of a fire brigade, jailed for five years for receiving a dividend of 1.61m yuan (£118,000) from a fire prevention equipment company - despite not being a shareholder. He had been rewarded for promoting the company.

Corruption is by its nature hard to measure, but is believed to cost China billions of yuan a year.