Combating corruption online: excitement mixed with worries

Anti-corruption on micro-blogs has been getting increasingly influential recently. Reports about suspected corrupt officials are seen almost every day and the disciplinary inspection departments have intervened to verify the truth.

According to the Chinese constitution, citizens have the right to make criticisms, suggestions, complaints and exposures to the state organs and staffs. However, some important deficiencies exist in the anti-corruption of using micro-blogs. For example, most of Internet users adopt the "presumption of guilt," thinking that no officials are clean-handed, so the micro-blogs became the virtual guillotine for Robespierre, celebrating the victory of revolution. In addition, the deficiencies also include the subjective judgments of public opinion, the absence of laws, the explosive revelations supported by celebrity users of micro-blogs and media, the helplessness of the accused to defend for themselves and the lack of right relief. The vague identity of whistleblowers is easily used in the battles of officials, and the incident of sexually explicit photographs of officials in Lujiang, Anhui province, is a hurt to the public order and moral. The social trust system is being damaged in an era of calling for muckrakers.

The anti-corruption behaviors on micro-blogs need the intervention of disciplinary inspection departments react to the public opinions and eliminate false news. The official micro-blog of the Politics and Law Committee of Guangdong said that as there are so many exposed cases on the micro-blogs, the procuratorates and anti-corruption bureaus of Guangdong should launch official micro-blogs to fight against corruption. With the user name of "Zhongshanqingfeng," the official micro-blog of Nanjing Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision Bureau will make a public response to the tip-offs of the netizens. The disciplinary inspection departments should advocate the private delegation, which can both protect the rights and interests of informers and prevent from unnecessary injuries of officials before investigation, as well as avoiding arousing suspicions of the offenders. At the same time, it also should expand other channels of whistle blowing and supervision.

Despite the hyperactive public opinions, the news media must keep a clear mind and do not take the popular post on the Internet as news coverage unless they have an interview with it. The "opinion leaders" are mostly successful in some fields, but they may lack basic professional ethics of journalism and the suddenly gained right to speak may make them relax self-discipline. The media and the people can value the points of view of the opinion leaders but take their news and forwarded news less seriously.

The media are the "gatekeeper" of information, so they should carefully examine suspicious online news and alleviate the excited netizens. The "Tort Liability Act" had taken effect on July 1, 2010, stipulating that micro-blogs, forums and social networking sites have the joint responsibility to netizens' infringing of the individual privacy of others. The legal circle should also stand out to clarify the boundary of rights of officials and Internet users: Officials have the right of social resource allocations, which should accept the supervision of the public and the media, but their personal privacy should be respected and protected. Netizens should undertake due legal and moral responsibilities for their false news.

Compared with the situation that everyone can send messages on micro-blogs, traditional media are more suitable to dig the anti-corruption clues and disclose the truth. They can make accurate judgments on the nature of the case and its social impact, and they are self-disciplined because releasing false news will damage their professional reputation. In the Internet era, especially in the face of increasing pressure from public opinions, the question that whether the traditional media can serve as the "filter" of chaotic Internet information, so as to build a stable, open, tolerant and rational cyberspace for public opinions is worth thinking about.

An article published by Outlook Weekly in 2009 wrote that only by provision of an institutional channel for non-governmental anti-corruption, can the non-government anti-corruption force be better integrated into the overall anti-corruption resource configuration as a renewable resource. A netizen warned that online anti-corruption will not be a long-term solution and without a complete institutional system to rely on, it will probably, sooner or later, become another kind of "Great Cultural Revolution" or online "blind anti-corruption". According to "www.xinhuanet.com", online anti-corruption is forcing the government to update its mechanism in this regard. Task of fighting corruption in China should not rely on "anti-corruption campaign"; while online and institutional anti-corruption activities should coordinate and push together, the latter should still play a leading role. In particular, standardization of the operational procedures of public power should be incorporated so as to prevent corruption. For instance, Guangdong province has carried out pilot program to declare and publicize family property of leading cadres, which is encouraging.

The tide of fighting corruption via micro-blogs is about to become another turning point faced by the Internet ever since the bullet train accident in Wenzhou. Nowadays, combat against corruption via micro-blogs is on a raising trend and urgently needs specifying. General netizens, opinion leaders, as well as traditional media should enhance their self-discipline and make a good use of their discourse power carefully in line with the restraints by law and social conventions. Public will is like flood, which once became unbalanced and overflows, would cause backlash and ultimately result in retrogress of network speech freedom and democracy.