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Official threatens reporter probing his many properties
By Ni Tao |
April 17, 2013, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
SOME officials in China like to lecture reporters on how they should go about doing their business, and sometimes they don't even bother to disguise their malice in so doing.
Han Qinghua, deputy mayor of Bazhou City, Hebei Province, was recently exposed to own nine properties. When a reporter asked him to account for these apartments, whose value obviously exceeds his modest official salary, he replied curtly. Then he admonished the reporter. "You are still young and have a long way to go ... I hope we will not harm each other," he was quoted as saying.
These words would strike anyone as a thinly veiled threat. Han deserves to be "harmed" by due process of law if his properties are proved to have been illicitly acquired. He seemed to imply that he would retaliate against the reporter for the harm inflicted on his political career, unless the reporter halted the probe.
While the public has high, rather idealistic, hopes for a system of mandatory disclosure of officials' properties, this initiative is encountering resistance. Officials are trying frantically to conceal properties they accept as bribes from the prying gaze of the press and public. Some of them, such as Huang, are brazenly fighting back, with so-called "admonitions" barely distinguishable from threats.
Recently quite a few regional officials have been sacked for making absurd and insulting remarks. When asked if pollution was the cause of reddish underground water, an environmental chief in Cang County of Hebei Province dismissed speculation and said water could be dyed red by red beans. He was later fired for spouting hogwash.
Many of our politicians are so accustomed to snubbing and underestimating the media that they don't always think before they speak, paving the way for their downfall.
It would seem that cunning officials would avoid a confrontational approach, but the myriad scandals involving the likes of Huang, provocative as they sound, suggest that they are too arrogant to fear the consequences of their faux pas and threats.
'Fetish' for official cars makes widespread abuse hard to curb
PREMIER Li Keqiang, after he took office, said that during his term the government will live on a tighter budget by cutting down on the "three public expenses," meaning receptions, junkets, and official cars funded by tax money.
Li's pledge is timely, in view of the findings of some fiscal surveys. It is reported that purchase of government cars (including military cars) represent 60 percent of the overall "three public expenses."
Although there have long been clear rules on purchase and use of official cars, these rules are at best circumvented and at worst never really enforced. Many cadres have indeed monopolized official cars for their private comfort, using them to ferry their family and themselves around for activities unrelated to work.
Since no subordinates would risk their careers by challenging their superiors for private use of government vehicles, these violations are generally unknown to the public until outsiders blow the whistle.
Before 1984, there was a strict hierarchy regulating use of government vehicles. Only ministry-level officials were assigned cars for exclusive use. Cadres of bureau-level and above could only apply to drive cars in performing their duties. As China's government became flush over the years, any hierarchy is long gone.
The fiscal burden of maintaining an enormous government car fleet has at last prompted some localities to issue transport allowances instead of cars for cadres.
But official cars have become a symbol of privilege, and any attempt to curb numbers and use is a thorny issue.
And while some officials are being stripped of that privilege, a process fraught with obstruction from vested interests, we have seen the very privilege corrupting general social mores.
As army number plates exempt drivers from road tolls and fines for speeding, they are coveted by businessmen who flout traffic rules.
Battling corruption on wheels is not as easy as trimming government budget.
It involves also limiting the pernicious influence of the fetish of cars.
Han Qinghua, deputy mayor of Bazhou City, Hebei Province, was recently exposed to own nine properties. When a reporter asked him to account for these apartments, whose value obviously exceeds his modest official salary, he replied curtly. Then he admonished the reporter. "You are still young and have a long way to go ... I hope we will not harm each other," he was quoted as saying.
These words would strike anyone as a thinly veiled threat. Han deserves to be "harmed" by due process of law if his properties are proved to have been illicitly acquired. He seemed to imply that he would retaliate against the reporter for the harm inflicted on his political career, unless the reporter halted the probe.
While the public has high, rather idealistic, hopes for a system of mandatory disclosure of officials' properties, this initiative is encountering resistance. Officials are trying frantically to conceal properties they accept as bribes from the prying gaze of the press and public. Some of them, such as Huang, are brazenly fighting back, with so-called "admonitions" barely distinguishable from threats.
Recently quite a few regional officials have been sacked for making absurd and insulting remarks. When asked if pollution was the cause of reddish underground water, an environmental chief in Cang County of Hebei Province dismissed speculation and said water could be dyed red by red beans. He was later fired for spouting hogwash.
Many of our politicians are so accustomed to snubbing and underestimating the media that they don't always think before they speak, paving the way for their downfall.
It would seem that cunning officials would avoid a confrontational approach, but the myriad scandals involving the likes of Huang, provocative as they sound, suggest that they are too arrogant to fear the consequences of their faux pas and threats.
'Fetish' for official cars makes widespread abuse hard to curb
PREMIER Li Keqiang, after he took office, said that during his term the government will live on a tighter budget by cutting down on the "three public expenses," meaning receptions, junkets, and official cars funded by tax money.
Li's pledge is timely, in view of the findings of some fiscal surveys. It is reported that purchase of government cars (including military cars) represent 60 percent of the overall "three public expenses."
Although there have long been clear rules on purchase and use of official cars, these rules are at best circumvented and at worst never really enforced. Many cadres have indeed monopolized official cars for their private comfort, using them to ferry their family and themselves around for activities unrelated to work.
Since no subordinates would risk their careers by challenging their superiors for private use of government vehicles, these violations are generally unknown to the public until outsiders blow the whistle.
Before 1984, there was a strict hierarchy regulating use of government vehicles. Only ministry-level officials were assigned cars for exclusive use. Cadres of bureau-level and above could only apply to drive cars in performing their duties. As China's government became flush over the years, any hierarchy is long gone.
The fiscal burden of maintaining an enormous government car fleet has at last prompted some localities to issue transport allowances instead of cars for cadres.
But official cars have become a symbol of privilege, and any attempt to curb numbers and use is a thorny issue.
And while some officials are being stripped of that privilege, a process fraught with obstruction from vested interests, we have seen the very privilege corrupting general social mores.
As army number plates exempt drivers from road tolls and fines for speeding, they are coveted by businessmen who flout traffic rules.
Battling corruption on wheels is not as easy as trimming government budget.
It involves also limiting the pernicious influence of the fetish of cars.
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