FROM FORMER SECURITY CHIEF ZHOU YONGKANG to the most recently fallen Ling Jihua, former vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, almost every senior corrupt official has been found to own a network of personal relations, intermingled with power and interests, involving hundreds of officials. Such gangs of corruption must be removed for the ongoing anti-graft efforts to truly succeed. Comments:

Corruption gangs, like cancer, are so rampant that an incredibly high percentage of officials are involved in them; worse, those staying clean face an adverse situation during selection for promotion because cleanness is against the interests of these gangs. For the top leadership, there is no choice but to fight this gang culture to the very end, so that the campaign against corruption won't fail halfway.

people.com.cn, Dec 31

Senior officials tend to form a circle of corruption with their influence, which in turn helps hide its members' corruption from being discovered or investigated - that's a typical practice among such officials. The recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the Party's Central Committee vowed not to tolerate gangs of corruption, that's a clear signal where the anti-corruption campaign is heading in the future.

Wang Yukai, professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, Jan 3

Corrupt gangs of officials may be formed through family ties, birth regions even leisure activities, but they share the same lack of supervision over power. For example, laws and regulations have clear provisions on how to select a secretary for an official, but in practice the nomination of secretaries is decided by no one but the official himself, which leaves loopholes for them to form alliances. Zhou Yongkang was found to have a corruption gang composed of his former secretaries, which shows the deficiencies in our system.

Gao Bo, a researcher on clean governance studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Jan 3