( E.J. Salisbury is a Back Page Lead correspondent in Beijing.)

In October last year President Hu Jintao and Vice-Premier Xi Jinping made some ominous remarks about the need to "revitalise" Chinese soccer. Apparently Vice Premier Xi had been embarrassed about the poor performance of China's national team during a visit to Germany a while back.

November last year saw the Chinese Government ( i.e. the Chinese Communist Party) launch a vigorous campaign to stamp out match-fixing, bribery, and other corrupt practices in China's football world. Football has long been deeply rotten. Indeed, the Chinese language has a specific phrase for corrupt umpiring of games - the heishao or ‘black whistle.'  Finally, under pressure from millions of disgusted fans, the Party was forced to act.

First to go was Mr Fan Guangming, an advertising official with the CFA. Fan was arrested for alleged involvement in match-fixing and gambling during a tour of Singapore by Chinese domestic teams, including a team from Liaoning Province.

In late January Mr Nan Yong, president of the China Football Association, was politely invited to attend a meeting at The Ministry of Public Security's police headquarters in Liaoning Province. Also invited was the vice president Mr Yang Yimin and the head of referee affairs Mr Zhang Jianqiang. Apparently Mr Nan drove across to China's Scotland Yard in a buoyant mood. But his good cheer evaporated when he was informed in blunt terms that he was not going home that night for his regular bowl of noodles with his family. No, he was to stay with the coppers for the foreseeable future to assist them with their enquiries. The same went for Yang and Zhang.

Exactly how Mr Nan performed this assistance is not known, but a couple of sessions with Beijing's finest doubtless produced the goods. Most damning was the discovery in a bank account linked to the single debit card in his wallet of some six million renminbi in funds. This amounts to just under a US$1 million. For a public servant this proved more difficult to explain than for China to win the next World Cup.

On 1 March Mr Nan was formally arrested on charges of bribery, corruption, and various other ghastly crimes. Ten years punishment on a labour farm somewhere west of Mongolia is one thing, but the real problem for Mr Nan is that he's a civil servant. In China the Government runs all sport, particularly sports of mass appeal such as football. The president of the China Football Association is, yes, a government official. And, unlike private citizens or businessmen, for public servants the penalty for serious corruption is death.

How did Nan Yong come end up so badly corrupted? Could it have something to do with advertising revenues? Well, indeed, yes. Drawing from the pre-Rogge Olympic manual of financial and corporate governance, Nan set up a deal with a Hong Kong businessman to have Chinese football's advertising deals for foreign companies all go through a Hong Kong agent. Details of how Nan's own bank account filled up so rapidly with money will doubtless be aired at his trial. But it seems that he positioned himself to receive money both from teams in the domestic league who wanted to win ( after all, with his devoted colleague Zhang he controlled the referees), and from the sponsors of the matches.

There was also a scheme for players to pay Nan Yong for places in the national team training squad and for inclusion in China's team for major matches. In December police arrested leaders of the Chengdu Blades FC - owned by Sheffield FC - for bribing the Qinghai Hailifeng FC to fix a match which Chengdu won 2-0 and thrust them into the premier league. News of the investigation prompted a shocked Nan Yong to declare that match-fixing and gambling in Chinese football should be wiped out.

A former CFA official ventured the remark that the corruption in Chinese football was due to " a lack of democratic decision-making." Now that isn't the sort of sentiment one would go around Beijing's corridors of power proclaiming in a loud voice. But it's horses for courses in China. The Party, in magnificent perfection, rules without elections. But a lack of democracy in China's sporting bodies leads to.....black whistles, incurable bribery, and for Nan Yong, a firing squad.

As China continues to grow its economy at breakneck pace corruption is perhaps the country's most intractable social problem. Nothing eats away more at the authority and legitimacy of the Party. China's leaders do what they can to deal with corruption. But the problem is bigger than the government. Late last year both the chief justice and the chief of police in the huge city of Chongqing were arrested for involvement with gangsters. And now it's football's turn for a good purging.

Many of China's court-ordered executions are carried out where? In football stadiums, with a crowd watching.