Independent Chinese Website Allows Netizens to Report Corruption

A new Chinese website, based on a similar Indian site, proports to be a convenient platform for Chinese netizens to report instances of bribery and official corruption. From the “He Took Bribes” site mission statement:

“‘He Took Bribes’ is a non-profit public interest site that opposes corruption and greed and provides users with a convenient platform for reporting cases. We will examine and verify reports that are submitted, weed out malicious and random reports, and then with other cases, in accordance with local procedures, we will submit them to local prosecutors in the most direct fashion possible. After local prosecution organs have confirmed the information, we will publicly publish the details of the story and the result of the report [on the site].”

The site is remarkably new, having been up for just a few days, but it’s already gotten more than 2 million page views. In fact, it got over a million within its first 24 hours.

In years past, the Chinese government has launched several similar sites that allowed net users to report corruption and injustice online. However, the sites were quickly crushed under a massive wave of interest; the site creators were not prepared to receive more than a few thousand hits per week, and their servers quickly buckled under the pressure.

“He Took Bribes” is clearly more prepared for the massive interest of China’s net users in this kind of service. And it plans to publicly publish corruption cases, something the official government sites never attempted to do. However, as an independent site that (as far as we can tell thus far), it is not government affiliated, thus, its existence may already be threatened.

Although the site claims that all reports will be confirmed by local government organs before being posted online, I find it highly unlikely the government will be comfortable allowing an independent non-profit to receive and publish reports about corruption, which is one of China’s most controversial issues, under any circumstances.

As of now, though, the site remains live, popular, and unblocked in China. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this and will endeavor to report further developments as they occur.