Graphic News: Testing Times for China's Officials

(Beijing) – Being a government official in China has many advantages. The job is stable and comes with handsome pay, good benefits and, of course, power. But it is also fraught with pressure and risks, a fact borne out by a rising death toll.

The government has never released official statistics or research results on topic, but many media reports on officials' suicides have appeared in recent years, and these coincide with a Communist Party crackdown on corruption that began in late 2012. Two officials killed themselves in May alone, highlighting the pressure those in officialdom are increasingly under.