Most leading officials have the authority to sign bills for restaurant dinners, and the account check done afterwards is generally slack. Hosting banquets that have little to do with business, or that are costlier than necessary has become quite common. It is widely believed that China's eatery industry owes a large part of its boom to the patronage of official gourmets.
The problem has been a major target of the public anger against official corruption, and the authorities have made it a focal point in efforts to build a clean government. However, corruption in a less irksome guise has never stopped and seems to have become more rampant. The nation's drive to address the problem seems to have had little effect.
For instance, the government of Wuhan, capital of Hubei province where the aforementioned Party School is located, officially issued a ban on using public money to host banquets for non-business purposes in 2005. But the practice persists. A reader of the news about the Party School posted an online comment that the street on which the school is located has more than 10 restaurants, which are "crowded everyday."
"If the school's students are banned from eating in the restaurants, a large number of waitresses from rural areas will lose their jobs," the netizen says mockingly.
The fact that feasting on public money has become a chronic affliction may be attributed to a number of reasons. For instance, hosting banquets for business purposes is a tradition in Chinese culture, and it is sometimes difficult for the audit authorities to check the problem. More worrisome, however, is that a number of officials have developed a mentality that eating on public money is not wrong. Even a section of the masses regard it as a "mild malpractice" as compared to millions of RMB raked in by officials in bribes.
【与腐败有关的文章】相关文章:
最新
2020-09-15
2020-08-28
2020-08-21
2020-08-19
2020-08-14
2020-08-12