Henan Province officials have sent round-the-clock teams to surround a capital city hotel and prevent their residents from reporting corruption to a discipline inspection team sent from Beijing by the central government.

City, town and county government staff have been guarding the entrance to a hotel in Zhengzhou, where inspectors are staying, the Economic Observer reported on Saturday.

Their duty is to stop their own residents from entering.

Staff from Nanyang, Luoyang, Zhoukou, Xinxiang, Pingdingshan and other Henan cities and towns started blocking the Huanghe Hotel earlier this month, shortly after inspectors arrived at the end of March.

Petitioners flooded to the hotel after local peddlers sold pieces of paper with inspectors' contact information.

Some Henan cities sent a dozen people each, the Beijing-based newspaper estimated.

A staff member from Nanyang said his city had sent about 40 people to guard not just the hotel but also the provincial department of public security and "window 8," a booth at the provincial reception center for visits temporarily designated by inspectors to receive complaints about officials at deputy-department level or higher.

People seized the chance to complain about officials of all levels as lines formed outside the window.

They were wasting their time, a staff member for the central inspection team's report hotline told the Global Times.

People must understand they only accept reports about the highest levels. "It's no use coming to the hotel," she said.

They would only suggest people go seek out a more relevant authority, she explained.

Blocking people was illegal, a Beijing Youth Daily editorial said on Sunday.

"It's not just a violation of people's right to petition, but also obstructing the work of central government inspectors," it said.

"The nature and results of this behavior are very serious."

People should not flood the hotel, causing inconvenience for the inspectors, Yang Wei-

dong, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, told the Global Times.

Of course, he conceded, people wouldn't be doing that if the formal channels worked.

"The petitioning system needs further improvement so that conflicts can be resolved during daily practice and people don't all crowd over one inspection team at the same time," he said.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China is inspecting ministries, universities, State-owned companies and provincial-level regions such as Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, Fujian, Shandong and Henan.

They arrived in Henan on March 28 and are supposed to leave in two months.