(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-20 07:27

The website of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) crashed on Tuesday, just hours after its launch, as droves of people logged on to complain about corruption among officials.

The website (yfj.mos.gov.cn) was closed for most of the afternoon, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

An NBCP official, who did not want to be named, confirmed the breakdown had occurred.

"Repairs were carried out soon after the website broke down and normal service has now been resumed, he told the Xinhua News Agency.

"The number of visitors was very large and beyond our expectations," he said.

As of 4 pm yesterday, visitors had left 22 pages of messages in the website's guest book.

While many of them referred to report specific cases of official corruption, these were redirected by the webmaster to other sites, such as that of the Ministry of Supervision.

Other visitors made calls for the strengthening of the government's anti-corruption efforts, and comments about the need for special attention to be given to cases involving institutes of higher education and grassroots governments.

"The corruption problem in China is a fatal illness. Establishing more institutions will not solve the problem," one comment read.

The enthusiasm that greeted the launch of the website reflects the growing frustration felt by the public toward corruption at government level, which has been accentuated by several high-profile cases in recent years.

Several senior officials, including Qiu Xiaohua, the former director of the National Bureau of Statistics; Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the food and drug administration; and Chen Liangyu, the former Party head of Shanghai, have been found guilty of serious corruption.

Last year, more than 90,000 officials were disciplined, according to official figures.

The NBCP was set up on September 13, with Ma Wen, the Minister of Supervision, as its head.

The bureau has been entrusted to collect and analyze information from the banking, land use, medicine and telecommunications sectors, among others, and to share it with prosecuting organs, courts and the police.

It is not, however, involved in the investigation of individual cases.