BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese bureaucrats who spent taxpayers' money on a $700-a-night Las Vegas hotel and visits to Hawaiian beaches and a San Francisco sex show might have gotten away with it if someone hadn't lost a bag on the Shanghai subway.
The dozens of documents and receipts in the bag, with officials' names and enthusiastic comments attached, were swiftly posted on the Internet, spreading like wildfire across Chinese cyberspace over the past week. That brought swift punishment for some officials involved — and another disgusted shrug from Chinese citizens all-too-familiar with corruption.
Officials gambling and spending government money on shopping sprees and sightseeing during overseas trips is hardly new. But making the lurid details public certainly is, illustrating the growing power of the Chinese public to use the Internet to expose wrongdoing.
"These are public resources, and people have the right to know how they were used," Wang Xixin, a law professor at Peking University, told The Associated Press Friday.
The bag was thought to have been left on the subway by a travel agent, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. The man who posted them online described himself as an IT engineer — and an angry one.
The documents chronicle the adventures of 23 officials from the eastern city of Wenzhou during five days of a three-week trip that cost taxpayers $94,000, Xinhua reported. Their Communist Party committee has demanded repayment of all unapproved expenses.
Xinhua said the group visited nearly a dozen cities, many more than authorized, and spent just five days on official business — far fewer than ordered.
The reasons for the trip? Everything from "An Overview of American History" to "Honest and Clean Government Management."
Back in the 80's there seemed to be a never ending report about excesses in the US military. $500 for a hammer, $1000 for a toilet seat. The list seemed to be never ending. But one general stated that the fact the news reports of this came out was a good thing. Meaning that suppliers that overcharged the military was being exposed.
The report of abuses is a similarly good thing for China. And I expect to see more reports. Especially given how news travels so well on the internet.
In conclusion, I want to see corruption weeded out of China. Do you? Or do you just want to relish in it? There are many in China that want to expose this sort of corruption. And the reason is simple, a less corrupt China is a more prosperous and competitive China. And everyone IN China wants to see a more prosperous and competitive China. Many outside of China, merely want to relish in the corruption instead of seeing it weeded out. I suppose it's because they have nothing to gain by a more competitive China.