Sex scandals: China’s best weapons against corruption?

(Ecns.cn) -- Cadres caught with their pants down – usually framed by their competitors within the Party – have fueled righteous indignation in China's restive blogosphere, Southern People Weekly reports.

Most of the officials were sacked after further investigations revealed that their hands were dirty long before the sex videos were leaked, however.

The latest case centers on Wu Hong, an official at Chongqing's Peiling District Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau. Pictures appeared online last Sunday showing him with a young, half-naked woman in a hotel room. The images were soon reposted thousands of times.

And late last month, Lei Zhengfu, 54, removed from his position as Party Secretary of Chongqing's Beibei District amid bribery allegations, just 63 hours after a video surfaced of him having sex with an 18-year-old girl.

Lei's ignominious fall highlights the growing influence of China's social media in pursuing bent officials. That video was exposed by Zhu Ruifeng, moderator of the People's Supervision Network, who posted numerous photos related to the scandal on his Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

Speaking in Chinese, Zhu says he got the tape from police inside the Chongqing Public Security Bureau, who told him they wanted to make a contribution to the movement against corruption.

But it wasn't just a noble anti-corruption effort, Zhu says – it was a consequence of political in-fighting. Based on my experience, 90 percent of whistleblowers come from inside the Party itself, and they usually do it in order to gain power, he adds.

Only when one's ambition becomes repugnant will he find himself in a scandal, usually wrought with evidence gathered beforehand:

In fact, the Lei Zhengfu sex tape was made in 2007. At a Chongqing hotel, a businessman presented his mistress for Lei's pleasure as a bribe for favorable regulatory decisions, and the young lady secretly recorded it, says Zhu.

Lei was caught in a classic ploy of entrapment, regularly used by Chinese officials and their associates against one another. His enemies had planned it long ago.

Sex scandals involving government officials are not confined to China, of course. Yet in other countries, they tend to be very personal, and have little to do with a politician's professional ethics, writes China Newsweek.

Unlike here, Western officials separate their jobs clearly from their personal lives and few cases involve outright corruption.

In the United States, for example, 58 politicians (mostly Congress members and federal officials) have been caught up in sex scandals between 1970 and 2012. Of those, 41 were personal matters involving extramarital love affairs and illegitimate children, while 13 were criminal cases (or alleged crimes). Only 4 involved corruption, according to the magazine.

Faced with public humiliation, some politicians offer to resign. Others (Bill Clinton) apologize, but go on to make political achievements that eventually overshadow their indiscretions.

Yet in China, corruption is often packaged with sexual misconduct, which can be verified by almost every fallen official in the country, notes China Newsweek.

The public here should understand that although sex scandals may be used as weapons against corruption, they should not be substitutes for honest government action and rule of law, the magazine says.