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He Jiahong, 61, splits his time between blogging, writing papers for legal journals and producing bestselling novels about the travails of Hong Jun, a “gentleman lawyer” based loosely on himself.

Some have dismissed his ideas as politically unworkable, but the academic is not a lone voice.

“Though many dirty officials have been caught in the past two years, the nation is far from rooting out the scourge,” an editorial in the influential magazine Caixin warned this week. “For every dirty official caught, another takes his place.”

‘Though many dirty officials have been caught in the past two years, the nation is far from rooting out the scourge’

A “twin focus on enforcement and prevention” was needed if the war on corruption was to be successful, the magazine added, calling for “the establishment of an accountability system that ensures effective oversight of those in power.”

While Mr. Xi has made the war on corruption one of his administration’s central themes, people have been detained or thrown in jail for publicly demanding that officials disclose their assets.

Friends had warned Mr. He that speaking out might be dangerous, but he shrugged off the risks.

“I’m not saying we will overthrow the government. No. I just want to make things better and I think with my research and studies over the past few years this is the right way and a good way to solve the problem.

“Otherwise we will fall into the vicious cycle of corruption, fighting corruption, then more corruption and then collapse of government, disaster.”

In February, Mr. He published two articles about corruption on his blog — one examining the cultural reasons for the phenomenon, the other focusing on its “institutional” roots.

The first went viral, receiving more than 640,000 hits in two days. But the second piece vanished almost immediately, wiped from the internet by Beijing’s censors.

The Daily Telegraph