The newly-founded website of China's National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NCBP) crashed on Tuesday, just hours after it was launched, as Chinese people logged on in their droves to complain about corruption among the official ranks.

The website (yfj.mos.gov.cn) was inaccessible on Tuesday afternoon due to the large number of visitors, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

A NBCP official, who declined to be named, confirmed to Xinhua the breakdown had occurred, saying, "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 4 p.m. on Wednesday, 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.

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 can not 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, which has been 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 Party head of Shanghai Chen Liangyu.

Last year, more than 90,000 officials were disciplined, but it only accounted for 0.14 percent of the total number of the CPC members.

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, land use, medicine and telecommunications sectors, among others, and to share it with prosecuting organs, courts and the police.

It is not, however, involved in the investigation of individual cases.

(Xinhua News Agency December 20, 2007)