Two corruption-related news stories have made headlines and led to sharp debates in the state media and internet chat rooms in the past few days. One involves a senior official in Shaanxi , reportedly brought down because of evidence supplied by his mistresses - 11 in total. The other is the official announcement that the mainland has launched another anti-corruption body, this time focusing on education and preventive measures against official corruption.
The two developments have shed more light on the scale of rampant official corruption bred by absolute power and the mainland leadership's desperate and seemingly futile attempts to curb it.
The state media reports about the corruption involving Pang Jiayu, a former deputy chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Shaanxi, have been a subject of great dismay and heated debate - and not just because he is corrupt and morally degenerate. After all, mainlanders are no longer easily shocked by the repeated revelations of official corruption and cadres' dalliances with younger women.
But Pang's case takes the cake. According to the reports, shortly after Pang became the mayor of Baoji in 1994, he took an interest in the wife of an official who was once Pang's superior and reportedly slighted him. Pang spiked her drink and enticed the woman into becoming his mistress.
Shortly afterwards, Pang found the woman a job and they continued to meet up. To avenge the slight and humiliate her husband, Pang - with a double-edged meaning - told a meeting attended by the husband how well he was satisfied with the woman's performance.
In 1997, when the decision was made to reassign many Baoji government officials, some of them, hoping for promotions, sent their wives to 'chat' with Pang, earning him the nickname 'the zipper mayor'.
After he became the more powerful party secretary of Baoji in 1998, he began to award his growing army of mistresses or their husbands with government infrastructure contracts or financial projects. In one water diversion project, Pang reportedly had to hold a meeting to divide the project between his wife and his mistresses, causing the budget to double.