Results tagged “officials”

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

This famous line was said by a very famous professor, Yi Zhongtian （易中天）, on CCTV. Yi Zhongtian, a professor at Xiamen University, is famous for his lecture series on CCTV-10 about the Han Dynasty and one of China's classic masterpieces, Romance of the Three Kingdoms （三国演义).

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?

Heating up the Chinese blogosphere is a comment made by an official in Henan: "Will you speak for the Party? Or will you speak for the people? (你是准备替党说话，还是准备替老百姓说话？)", insinuating that the two are mutually exclusive. Zhengzhou urban planning development vice director Lu Jun made the comment, allegedly in anger, to a reporter probing a suspicious property scheme. It was broadcast nationwide, nominated as the catch phrase for 2009, and Lu was named "the official who dares most to speak the truth" by Chinese netizens. Lu, who was suspended by his embarrassed superiors, has denied making the comment. Source: Shanghai Daily. Picture from SCOL (Chinese)

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.

• Chinese Woman Accused of Murdering Official Freed on Bail [WSJ] "A female hotel employee whose arrest on murder charges sparked a wave of national sympathy in China after her lawyers said she was fighting off a rape attack has been released on bail. Deng Yujiao, 21, was arrested after she stabbed two local government officials with a fruit knife on May 10 in the Xiongfeng Hotel in central Hubei province, killing one of them. Ms Deng's lawyers said she acted in self defense when the men tried to rape her after she refused to have sex with them for money. The case has sparked public anguish over the issue of violence towards woman."
• China ties make Macau good bet to beat Vegas [Reuters] "The world economy may be slumping, but don't tell that to Macau -- the former Portuguese colony which is set to trump Las Vegas heading out of the worst global downturn since the Great Depression. In the smoke-filled gambling halls of Macau's MGM Mirage casino, hundreds of Chinese gamblers were crammed around tables flipping cards, playing roulette and rolling dice on a recent day, seemingly unaffected by the slowdown."
• Climate change a 'game changer' in US-China relations: Pelosi [AFP] "US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that the fight against climate change was a "game changer" in China-US relations, as she visited Beijing on a trip focused on energy. Pelosi, a tough critic of China's human rights record and a vocal advocate of environmental protection, is leading a delegation from the US Congress to China on a working visit devoted to energy and climate change."

       

From the Netease forums comes the story of 皖怀希望小学 (Anhui Hope Elementary School), a grade school for migrant workers in Shanghai that was mysteriously vandalized and then shut down earlier this year.

The local government in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province has just passed what looks like a wide-reaching law making it illegal for people to publish someone else's 'private information' on the Internet. Offenders can be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for half a year! The news comes one month after a district housing bureau chief in Nanjing was dismissed after netizens posted photos of him wearing a RMB100,000 watch and smoking a RMB150 a pack cigarettes. The pictures spread like wildfire on the web because those items were seen to be beyond the means of someone living on a civil servant's modest wages.

• A man and a woman have been killed by a carbon monoxide leak in a downtown Shanghai apartment yesterday morning while two of theirr roommates remain in a coma.
• Taiwan is coordinating with mainland authorities on the possibility of increasing the number of charter flights to and from Shanghai for the convenience of Taiwanese residents looking to go home during the Lunar New Year season.
• North Carolina has opened its seventh foreign trade office in Shanghai. This is the state's second China trade office after Hong Kong.

This CCTV recording from a Shenzhen restaurant on Oct 29, carefully captioned by the wonderful guys from ChinaSmack, shows an 11 year old girl guiding a man to the restroom, and running away back into the restaurant soon after. She returns with her parents and brother to confront the man with the help of the restaurant, and a huge argument soon ensued. According to the girl, the man had grabbed her neck and tried to force her into the bathroom with him.