小官巨腐 (xiaoguan jufu): Extremely corrupt grassroots officials

Yu Fan, director of a community in Xi'an, Northwest China, has been convicted of accepting more than 100 million yuan ($16 million) in bribes, which is typical of extremely corrupt grassroots officials.

Extremely corrupt grassroots officials are not uncommon. Central China's Hubei province launched a special crackdown on such corrupt "flies" this year. By the end of September, the Hubei discipline inspection authority had investigated and dealt with 745 typical cases of seriously corrupt grassroots officials.

Although the administrative rank of grassroots officials is not high, they have crucial decision-making power in some significant sectors, which easily results in serious corruption. Some grassroots officials take advantage of their administrative power in construction projects such as reconstruction of old city areas to extort money or take bribes from related enterprises, and some of them embezzle public funds such as allowances or subsidies.

These cases of extremely corrupt grassroots officials have exposed loopholes in the system. Many grassroots administrative positions lack necessary supervision. Since grassroots officials have great power in their hands and lack supervision, it is very likely to breed corruption.