Prosecutors in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality will look for criminal information on the Internet and in the media on a daily basis as part of their anti-corruption efforts, according to a new rule issued on Wednesday.

The rule on handling reports online, which elaborates how to collect, deal with and provide feedback to complaints, is the first of its kind in the country.

It stipulates that procuratorates in Chongqing should set up a special team, or designate certain officers, to look for corruption-related clues from online sources.

China's procuratorate has a special division responsible for crimes involving dereliction of official duty, such as bribery and corruption. These cases are not handled by the police.

"Before, most procuratorates, including us, collected complaints mainly through hotlines and our own reporting websites. Now, the Internet has become a new source," Lei Wanya, deputy procurator-general of Chongqing People's Procuratorate, said on Wednesday.

With more people unleashing their anger and expressing their opinions online, the Internet has become a major platform and channel for people's voices and needs, Lei said.

"The country is facing rising social conflict and people's awareness as citizens is also improving," he said.

According to a recent survey, 99 percent of netizens would endeavor to expose incidents of social injustice online, he said.

"It is an irreversible trend that politics is entering the Internet age," he said.

The rule on handling online reports stipulates that each procuratorate in Chongqing should form a team or designate officers to collect sources online and pass the information to the relevant departments.

The departments should then provide feedback to the team of officers within three days.

Prosecutors are also encouraged to collect public complaints from media coverage.

Lei said the procuratorate authorities in Chongqing began to collect tips from the Internet in May, through registering an online name "Chongqing Jiancha", which means Chongqing prosecutors.

By Tuesday, they had collected 34 complaints, including 11 reports containing real names.

"Some are very valuable clues that will help us a lot," Lei said. "We also give feedback online on how we follow these clues."

One example was in May, when Chongqing Jiancha found a clue on Tianya.cn, one of China's most popular forums, about a bribery case in a county of Chongqing.

Following an investigation, several officials were found to have taken bribes, including a deputy city-level official, Lei said.

(China Daily July 23, 2010)