Zhu Dongsheng, former director of a government division of Zhenjiang, East China's Jiangsu province, is under investigation for corruption. Zhu is extraordinarily thrifty in everyday life, making a 2-hour bus journey to the countryside to buy soy products. However, he took advantage of his approval authority to take bribes of more than 1.95 million yuan ($314,000), and he has been called a "miserly corrupt official" by the media.

Such kind of corrupt officials are not uncommon. The former deputy director of the coal department of the National Energy Bureau Wei Pengyuan rode a bike to work every day, but was found to have hoarded 100 million yuan in bribes at home. The former general manger of the Water Supply Company in Beidaihe, Hebei province, Ma Chaoqun only had a bowl of noodles for dinner, but he allegedly had more than 100 million yuan in cash and 37 kilograms of gold at home.

These corrupt officials are more difficult to detect because they always disguise themselves by appearing thrifty. The official assets declaration system needs to be strengthened to make the supervision of officials more transparent and efficient, which may effectively discover such corrupt officials no matter how well they disguise themselves.