A new chapter against graft

The Guangzhou official who became a media darling as a crusader for honest governance is back in the spotlight with a three-volume book series about corruption. Liu Zhihua reports.

Fan Songqing is again making headlines nearly two years after he famously proposed all officials in Guangdong province's capital Guangzhou declare their assets and took the lead by disclosing his - this time for his self-published book series on corruption.

The 59-year-old deputy secretary-general of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference's Guangzhou municipal committee is once more rocking the boat with his three-volume series on graft published in September.

I Advocate Against Corruption comprises more than 1.3 million words from the official's experience working for the city's discipline inspection commission from 1998 to 2007, during which time he worked on many cases not made public.

"I'm about to retire, and these books are important outcomes of my hard work," he says.

"But it's not easy to publish them."

Fan believes his work with the discipline committee was meaningful. He mostly wrote reports and leaders' speeches, and says he'd often toil late into or through the night.

"I was sometimes astonished to learn about corrupt officials' immoral deeds," he recalls.

That's one of the reasons he wrote the books.