It's not age that really matters

Amid the painstaking efforts of the Chinese government to fight corruption, a new phenomenon has emerged in which many officials were discovered to have misused their power in the "golden age" of their careers.

The golden age of an official's career is usually around 39 years old, thus the name "39 phenomenon" given to the occurrence. But corruption during the "39 phenomenon" or an official's "golden age" is not a universal trend.

Advocates of this theory usually cite the example of Gu Fei, the corrupt official born in 1970 who was the ex-deputy director of Dadukou district, Chongqing municipality.