The newly-launched Website of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) crashed on Tuesday, just hours after it was launched, as Chinese people logged on in their droves to complain about corruption among officialdom.

The official website (yfj.mos.gov.cn) was inaccessible on Tuesday afternoon because of number of visitors.

A NBCP official said yesterday: "Repairs were carried out soon after the Website's sudden breakdown and normal service has been resumed.

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

By 4pm yesterday, Netizens had left 22 pages of messages on the Website's guestbook. Many were anxious to report specific cases of official corruption but were immediately directed to other websites such as that of the Ministry of Supervision, by the Webmaster.

Special attention

Some called for the strengthening of the government's anti-corruption work, others said corruption in institutes of higher education and grassroots governments should receive special attention.

"The corruption problem in China is a fatal illness - establishing more institutions cannot solve the problem," one comment read.

The enthusiasm that greeted the launch of the Website reflects the growing frustration felt by the general public towards corruption at government level, a frustration accentuated by several high-profile corruption cases in the last five years.

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

Last year, more than 90,000 officials were disciplined.

The NBCP was officially established 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, real estate, medicine and telecommunications sectors, among others, and to share it with prosecuting organs, courts and the police.