JUYUAN, China: China has insisted it will not allow corruption to infect its huge earthquake reconstruction effort, but one month after the disaster not everyone is convinced reality will match the pledge.

Corruption is rampant in China, in government ranks and throughout society, as the country ploughs through its development boom without a free press or an independent judiciary.

The huge amounts of money for post-quake relief make an enticing target for sticky-fingered government officials at all levels, said dissident journalist and Probe International Fellow Dai Qing.

Dai is a longtime critic of the massive Three Gorges Dam and the corruption linked to it. Enormous sums of money were reportedly siphoned off, including from programmes aimed at resettling the millions of people to be displaced by the dam’s reservoir.

Dai said China must urgently set up independent mechanisms on quake-proof reconstruction, use of funds, and other key reconstruction issues to avoid a Three Gorges repeat.

“Making all these issues transparent and publicizing the results of relevant investigations should be the first step toward reconstruction,” she said.