The official newspaper of the CPC Central Committee for Discipline Inspection has detailed how a corrupt official broke down after being taken away for questioning by inspectors.

Chen Quanbiao, the former head of the aquaculture, animal husbandry and veterinarian bureau of Beihai city in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was dismissed from the Party and removed from his post for violation of discipline in October 2016.

The article revealed how Chen reacted when he realized he was under investigation.

During a meeting held by the city's discipline watchdog to warn the bureau's cadres on April 26, 2016, serious discipline violations committed by one of Chen's subordinates were announced. Chen apologized to the inspectors for failing to supervise his subordinate properly.

What came as a surprise was that discipline inspectors announced that Chen himself was also under investigation for serious violations of discipline.

The report described how the meeting room fell silent suddently and Chen's "eyes were full of terror, his face turning pale, and his body trembling".

Chen reportedly said: "I was totally caught off guard at the moment. I could not feel my soul with my mind going blank. I never thought I would end up like this, in front of my subordinates. The mental preparation I had made to fight the investigation broke down in a sudden."

The CCDI newspaper said that although the inspectors had confirmed Chen's offenses before taking action, they did not reveal their intention before the meeting. As a result, when they announced Chen was to be probed for discipline violation, he was caught by surprise and did not resist being taken away.

Honest Outlook, an anti-corruption themed magazine, quoted an anonymous discipline inspection official as saying that "corrupt officials tend to have low vigilance during meetings" and most of them would "cooperate" when taken away by enforcement officers to avoid embarrassment in front of other people.

Using "the element of surprise" is a tactic of discipline inspectors in the anti-corruption campaign. The approach gives no time for the suspected officials to respond and serves as a warning to other officials, the People's Daily said in an article in July 2014.

A similar case involved Wan Qingliang, the former Party chief of Guangzhou. Wan was taken away by discipline inspectors for investigation during a meeting of the provincial Party committee on June 27, 2014.

In another surprise, former deputy governor of Jiangxi province, Yao Mugen, was taken away by enforcement officials when attending a national meeting on water conservation on March 21, 2014.