Results tagged “corruptofficials”

Communist officials are being warned to just say "No" to escort girls after recent scores of corruption and criminal cases involving officials and ladies of the night (including, we suppose, the ongoing charges against Chongqing's highest judicial official, Wen Qiang, who regularly sought out underaged girls and starlets). According to Li Yuanchao, a top member in the CPC Central Committee, "Party officials ought to stay away from vulgar venues and are not allowed to visit 'sanpei xiaojie' (female escorts) for entertainment." Good luck enforcing that one, guys.

• Party Elder Still Jousts With China’s Censors [NYTimes] "For nearly two decades, the Communist Party strove to wipe out the national memory of Zhao Ziyang, the reform-minded party secretary who opposed the use of force against pro-democracy protesters in 1989. So when a former aide of Mr. Zhao’s, Du Daozheng, disclosed in May that he had helped secretly record Mr. Zhao’s memoir for posthumous publication, Mr. Du’s daughter refused to let him walk outside alone for fear of possible repercussions. She need not have worried. On June 25, a top official in charge of propaganda showed up at Mr. Du’s western Beijing apartment with a reassuring message from Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the Communist Party and the government. Mr. Du said he was told that, as an old friend of Mr. Zhao’s, “Zhongnanhai and party central can understand why you did this.”"
• Olympic chief in ‘secret China deal’ [Times Online] "China made a secret deal with International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge to support his election to the post in return for Rogge's lobbying for Beijing to win the 2008 Olympics, according to an explosive new book by China's sports minister at the time, Yuan Weimin. The former minister says Rogge explicitly bargained with him to win Chinese votes at the Moscow meeting of the IOC in 2001, which awarded the games to Beijing and three days later elected Rogge as president."
• China corruption trial exposes capital of graft [Telegraph] "Huang Guobi lost her husband four years ago to gangsters who brutally dismembered him with machetes before beating her senseless. When she took the case to her local police station, she found it was run by the nephew of the gang-leader. As she worked her way up the Chinese justice system, pleading for someone to bring the killers to account, she found each level riddled with corruption. This week, however, 47-year-old Mrs Huang stood outside the Number Five Intermediate People's Court in downtown Chongqing, filled with anger and satisfaction. Around her, 300 other people, many with similar stories, stood waiting for justice to be done. Inside, the first trial of China's largest-ever criminal investigation was under way, the culmination of five months of police work that has turned the city of Chongqing upside down."

• Magazine's business chiefs resign [SCMP] "Top business executives at Caijing magazine, the mainland's most influential business publication, have resigned en masse, heightening speculation its ownership may change hands soon or that its managing editor and founder, Hu Shuli, may leave and start her own publication... Caijing general manager Daphne Wu Chuanhui and eight of her nine business directors have resigned, according to reporters briefed about the resignations."
• Can the Future of Western Newspapers be Saved by China? [Sino Tech Blog] "When looking at the Western and Chinese online newspaper landscape, many obvious differences are evident. There has been much written recently about the demise of the newspapers in the West as their circulation plummets and their online revenue models struggle to counter these losses in revenues. But what about the situation in China? Is the outlook as bleak? Is their similar trends and examples as there are in the US?… This is what I wanted to explore and understand more."
• Upgrade rather than cancellation for CCTV's concert series [Danwei] "The cancellation of CCTV's popular touring concert series, The Same Song (同一首歌), reported by the mainland media late last week and covered in this post, now seems to be little more than a rumor. The Beijing Times spoke to CCTV management and published a brief article on Saturday: 'Rumors have been flying saying that CCTV's flagship program The Same Song would be canceled after the National Day holiday. Yesterday, CCTV arts and entertainment center director Zhang Xiaohai said in an interview that no such cancellation would occur.'"

Shanghai's thinking of putting a stop to revolving doors, debating new regulations for officials after their retirement or resignation in order to check "future corruption." The regulation draft stipulates that high-level officials should not work in profit-making organizations that had a direct link to their government jobs for three years after retiring or resigning. They would also be forbidden from things that might be in conflict with the public interest. Personnel departments are now being asked to keep records of ex-officials' jobs. Source: Xinhua

“I cannot remember the people who bribed me with money, but I do remember the ones that didn’t.” — Xu Guoyuan (徐国元), ex-mayor and vice Party chief of Chifeng City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

So it seems like people who are douchebags in one way are highly likely to be douchebags in another way as well. AsiaTimes Online reports that an anti-graft official recently acknowledged in public that 95% of corrupt officials had a woman on the side. In fact, keeping mistresses has become so fashionable that its seems like "concubinism is back." These mistresses are often given houses, money to play with and sometimes contracts for profitable projects. One banker in Shenzhen was reported to have spent 18.4 million RMB (of his bank's money) on his fifth mistress in almost three years. Another man in charge of infrastructure projects in Eastern China, had more than 140 women at his beck and call. Gross. The anti-graft official warned that mistresses were an easy way for an official to become corrupt. But we're inclined to believe that if an official's interested in keeping mistresses, he probably wasn't pure and true to begin with.

• E-waste 'recycling' in Guiyu, China [Alex Hofford] "So today I decided to upload more photos from a recent trip to Guiyu, the 'e-waste processing capital of China', that I made as part of a field project for my MJ course at the University of Hong Kong's JMSC. I have put these photos at the back of the album, behind the photos from Guangxi Province and Hong Kong that I took in 2007 and 2008."
• 9,000 officials guilty of graft: SPP [China Daily] "The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) revealed yesterday that more than 9,000 officials were found guilty of corruption in the first six months of the year and said it had investigated 6,277 industrial bribery cases. Qiu Xueqiang, SPP deputy procurator general, told a conference of procuratorate chiefs that the industrial bribery cases involved 6,842 people."
• China snubs World Games opening [BBC] "China has boycotted the opening ceremony of the World Games in Taiwan, an official with the games has said. A spokesman for the games, Hermann Kewitz, said China had not given an explanation but said that Chinese athletes would compete in the events. Beijing's decision came after organisers allowed Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou to open the games."

• Why China might turn on North Korea [CSMonitor] "China has long seen its national interests served by the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. According to a cold-war perspective about strategic balance and a post-cold-war emphasis on internal development, Beijing prioritized maintaining a buffer state and preventing North Korea's problems from spilling over China's border. While Beijing retains these priorities, the chances of it getting tough with Pyongyang are low. However, the China of today is not the China that came to Pyongyang's aid during the Korean War - its national identity has evolved over decades of rapid development and international integration. The ideas of communist solidarity and laying low to focus on modernization are becoming obsolete."
• Beijing Always Wins [NYTimes] "THE riots in the Xinjiang region, the home of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, will affirm to many analysts outside the country that social unrest is a direct threat to the continued rule of the Communist Party. If officials don’t take a long, hard look at how to avoid such uprisings, this argument will run, the government could eventually fall. If only Chinese officials saw things that way."
• Shenzhen Mayor Under Investigation [eChinacities] "Xu Zongheng(许宗衡), 54, was removed from his post as mayor of Shenzhen and is under investigation into allegations of corruption and graft that have stretched to include a former Olympic gymnast and several actresses. Xu became mayor of Shenzhen in 2005, advocating changes in the city’s bureaucracy. Many view Xu as partially responsible for the subsequent collapse of Shenzhen’s real estate market. The allegations revolve around bribes received for awarding government posts and bids."

A website set up specifically to help the populace report corruption has allegedly crashed after it was inundated with more visitors than it could handle, according to the BBC. www.12309.gov.cn was launced on Monday with an accompanying hotline number to inform central government officials about local corruption complaints, but the website was designed to cope with a maximum of 1,000 people making complaints at a time. The interesting thing about this story (besides it giving us a laugh at that whole "Officials, they're so corrupt, man" thing) is that it's strikingly similar to a Xinhua story from 2007. We guess the programmers didn't bother learning from their mistakes two years ago?

Deng Yujiao, the waitress who killed an official after he allegedly sexually assaulted her and promptly became a Chinese folk hero, has now been released following a two hour trial. The dead official, head of a trade promo department in Deng's town, is said to have demanded "special services" from Deng, thrown money in her face and pushed her to the sofa several times before she stabbed him with a fruit knife. The internet soon took special interest in her case, rallying several times against perceived "injustices" during the investigation and pre-trial phases of her ordeal. The Hubei province court ruled that Deng was guilty of intentional injury and had acted with "excessive defence," but freed her without punishment. She was diagnosed with a "mental imbalance." Source: BBC

Though Deng Yujiao, the 21-year-old waitress accused of killing a government official, may have been saved by the flurry of internet postings in her support, the same netizen fervor may be making it dangerous for reporters to get the full story.