China corruption website crashes

Staff said the website was designed to cope with a maximum of 1,000 people making a complaint at the same time. But the number of people using the site far exceeded this when it was launched on Monday. A Beijing News editorial said the site's popularity showed that people preferred national to local inquiries. The idea of the 24-hour anti-corruption website (www.12309.gov.cn) and its accompanying hotline number was to inform central government officials about local-level corruption. An earlier version of this nationwide tip-off system generated 20,000 reports of official abuse in 2008. Corruption is a huge problem in China, and correspondents say the central authorities are keen to crack down on it to prevent the issue weakening government control.

BBC News