Jiangsu anti-graft official's new work draws from real cases

Ding Jie's new book Zhui Wen (Investigation) draws from real-life cases of corrupt officials. [Photo provided to China Daily]

When he was just another young man from the countryside, his girlfriend, an urban woman, betrayed him after he failed the college entrance examination.

The unhappy ending left him traumatized. So, decades later when he became an official and went back to the place where his ex-girlfriend worked, he felt extremely satisfied to see her picture on the wall - a middle-aged stocky woman - especially when he compared her with his two young and pretty mistresses.

He was married and had a daughter, who was the only person that visited him in jail where he was sent for corruption.

This story, narrated in first person, is one of the eight stories based on real-life cases in Ding Jie's Zhui Wen (Investigation), a new book on the anti-corruption campaign.

Ding, 49, a civil servant in Jiangsu province, spent two years working on this book. He wrote other books earlier.

He was appointed as the secretary of the committee for discipline inspection in a State-run TV station in Jiangsu a few years ago. At first, Ding was not sure if he could do the job, but later he realized the similarities between the two jobs.

"Both writing and discipline inspection deal with people," he says.

The sensitivity of a writer and his or her understanding of human nature is helpful in dealing with corrupt officials, he says.

Ding had often been shocked by the cases he handled.

"I thought of writing a book about my feelings and the clashes in my mind during work from the perspective of a secretary of the committee for discipline inspection," he says.

However, he realized that compared with the story of a secretary for discipline inspection, the stories that are told from the perspective of corrupt officials might be more useful as a warning to society, Ding says.