Article content

SHANGHAI — China sacked on Friday a district Communist Party official after images of him having sex with his mistress were splashed across microblog websites.

The case highlights the influence of China’s fast-growing microblogging community, and the ruling Communist Party’s growing sensitivity and responsiveness to public anger against abuse of power, official impunity and corruption.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or China fires official after sex-tape shots appear on microblogging service Back to video

Screenshots from the sex video first appeared on Sina Corp’s Weibo site on Tuesday.

Lei Zhengfu, a district party chief in the southwestern city of Chongqing, was fired after an investigation by the party’s discipline watchdog confirmed that it was he who appeared in the video, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

The agency reported on Thursday that Lei had told a reporter the video, shot in 2007, was a fake.

The party has stepped up its rhetoric against corruption, seeking to counter anger from citizens over regular reports of graft and debauchery among officials, but efforts to root out the problem have hardly made a dent.