Revenge of the whistle-blowers(2)

He also pointed out that in many cases, if the private interests of muckrakers are met, necessary information might not reach the light of day.

These concerns have some basis. A survey conducted by the People's Tribune, a magazine under the People's Daily, in 2012 showed that the main reasons why people want to become high-level officials are grey income, power and social status, with "serving society" falling far behind.

Shady goals collide

The slogan "fighting corruption" seems like a noble reason for insiders to expose the dark deeds of some officials, but most of the time, those with the necessary information lack the motivation to speak out. Sometimes revenge or blackmail are motivations, or other government officials are manipulating events behind the scenes.

One recent case demonstrated how all these motivations can sometimes collide. The release of a sex video of former Party chief of Chongqing's Beibei district Lei Zhengfu, which led to the downfall of six Party and government officials, was the result of both blackmail gone wrong and political machinations.

After Lei, the then deputy Party chief, was taped having sex in 2007 he was blackmailed by the property company which organized the tryst. Lei then confessed to a "powerful higher official" in 2009 as soon as he realized that his career could come to an abrupt halt due to the scandal.

However, the official forgave him, assigning Wang Lijun, then chief of Public Security Department of Chongqing, to "take care of Lei's case" and confiscate the video. Soon after that, Lei was promoted by the higher official, Zhu told the Global Times.

"It's a sly move. You couldn't imagine a better way to buy people like this," Zhu noted.

But Lei's promotion triggered great anger among local officials, including Li Yajie (pseudonym), an official from the Public Security Department, who had Lei's video. Li then contacted Zhu and asked him to release it online.

"It was not my first time to get in touch with this kind of angry whistle-blowers. Only in this case, the video was extremely eye-catching, which led to a quick downfall of the corrupt officials," Zhu said, adding that provided there is plenty of evidence of sex scandals, it only took seven days to expel officials from their positions.

Can blackmail fight graft?

Compared with some insiders who aim to take personal revenge and end the careers of corrupt officials, some of them want money and turn to blackmail.

"Many corrupt officials have experienced blackmail. Their response is usually to pay some money to keep them quiet," Zhu said. This kind of behavior has created a number of shady markets.

Wang Zhiquan, an administrator of an online forum in Guangzhou, who released fake corruption information against some government officials and charged money to delete, was arrested in December 2011. He was then found to profit from the business since 2009, and gained 1 million yuan from the extortion in total. Many officials chose to give him the money to avoid potential investigations.

A previous case in Hebei Province in 2008 also saw similar extortion, with 82 fake journalists defrauding 11 million yuan from government officials.