Results tagged “graft”

• 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."

Shanghai Daily has been covering the crap out of the Minhang building collapse story (and good for them - it gives us something to blog about). Not only did Shanghai Meidu's construction company ignore "obvious warnings" of impending danger by piling up tons of soil next to the riverbank (a mistake experts are calling the antithesis of using common sense), it also ignored actual vocal warnings from supervisors at the site. Meanwhile, the possibility of graft being involved somewhere is still high. Minhang district authorities will be investigating whether several government officials had owning stakes in Shanghai Meidu. That would explain how the real estate company managed to get the land for one-third the price of plots bought in the same area.

Guangdong officials, perhaps not always known for their selflessness and incorruptibility, are in the middle of graft scandal that has brought down the province's top political adviser and (ironically) anti-corruption official.

• China, Japan, S Korea agree to push forward Six-Party talks [China Daily] "China, Japan and South Korea agreed here Saturday to continue pushing forward the Six-Party talks aimed at realizing denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
• Tiananmen 20 years later: A survivor's story [AP] Twenty years after China's military crushed dissent around Tiananmen Square, the details are still fresh in Qi Zhiyong's mind. The acrid smell of tear gas. The people run down by tanks. The dizzying pain when a bullet tore through his left leg.
• Graft in China Covers Up Toll of Coal Mines [NYTimes] "Under China’s authoritarian system, superiors reward subordinates for strict compliance with targets set from above, like reducing mine disasters... Work-safety officials in Beijing complain that even more than in other industries, death tolls from accidents at coal mines are often ratcheted down or not reported at all. That is because of the risky profits to be made — by businessmen and corrupt local officials — exploiting dangerous coal seams with temporary, unskilled workers in thousands of illegal mines."

A Shanxi official in charge of fighting out corruption has been fired after being caught being... well, corrupted. Zhao Mingwen, the head of a watchdog commission at Jinzhong city's Public Security Bureau had arranged a police escort for his mothers' funeral procession earlier this month. When journalists tried to film the passing motorcade, they were assaulted and had their cameras stolen by his people. A Shanxi Communist Party Discipline Commission statement held Zhao “primarily responsible for the entire incident happening and for its evil influence.” Source: New Zealand Herald