The Laughable Tragedy of an "Olympic Host" -- Chinese anti-drinking
campaign bumps into official reality ^o^ ^o^
International Herald Tribune
Chinese anti-drinking campaign bumps into official reality
By Jim Yardley
Thursday, March 13, 2008
BEIJING: No place in China has a tougher policy against official
drinking than Xinyang, a decaying city of seven million people in Henan
Province where the Communist Party chief has banned civil servants from
drinking even one sip of alcohol at lunch.
Of course, dinner is another matter.
When Guo ****zhong, a family planning official in an outlying area of the
city, died of a brain hemorrhage Feb. 27, local officials posthumously
recognized him as an "Excellent Party Member," presented him with a
merit award for dying with "honor on post" and launched a propaganda
campaign extolling ordinary people to learn from his example.
"We should learn from his spirit of working hard," the campaign
exhorted, "and we should make efforts to be a good party member like him."
What the officials did not mention is that Guo died not on the job but
at a karaoke bar after an evening of drinking with other officials. This
week, The Orient Today, a newspaper in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan
Province, re****ted that hospital records indicate that Guo's drinking
was so excessive that it contributed to his death.
And so this week, the same propaganda officials who fa****oned Guo as an
exemplar of Communist Party values have found themselves enmeshed in a
delicate new public relations exercise: damage control. On Thursday,
they announced that Guo's posthumous awards had been rescinded.
"We honored him due to his hardworking attitude and excellent
achievement," said Hu, a propaganda official who would only give his
surname. "We didn't know the situation of how he died."
Guo's story has rocketed around the Chinese Internet and sparked online
discussion about official drinking but also about the practice of
lavi****ng honors on dead Communist Party officials whether they deserve
them or not. Such honors bestow benefits on an official's family but can
also send a message that the late official should be considered beyond
reproach - and investigation.
Some online commentators have argued that these posthumous awards serve
as bureaucratic blocking devices to conceal corruption. In February, an
irate police official killed a deputy party secretary in the city of
Hohhot. Within days, local officials had designated the dead official as
a "revolutionary martyr." Yet re****ts quickly surfaced linking the dead
official to corruption, sparking a torrent of online criticism.
The current "Regulation on Honoring Revolutionary Martyrs" was approved
in 1980, when many Chinese people were still wearing Mao suits. Last
December, Personnel Minister Yin Weimin said efforts were under way to
revise regulations for the government's award system.
For the past year, Xinyang has undertaken a high-profile campaign to
stop civil servants from drinking at lunch. Special teams with breath
monitors make spot inspections at government offices, and more than 200
local officials have been reprimanded, shamed in the local press and
even fired. Local liquor sales and restaurant profits have dropped
sharply.
Guo, 46, worked as the head of family planning in Xin County, an
outlying jurisdiction under the administrative authority of the city of
Xinyang. Fu Yang, a propaganda official in Xin County, said Guo and some
colleagues had been working long hours on the night of his death. They
went to dinner to relax and socialize. Mr. Fu said county officials had
planned to honor Mr. Guo before his death and that media re****ts have
overemphasized the role of alcohol in his death.
No one seemed eager this week to take credit for honoring Guo. Officials
in Xinyang City blamed county officials for approving Guo's awards
without their knowledge. But there was one thing they did know,
emphatically:
"What we are positive is that Guo ****zhong did not violate the liquor
ban," a city official told The Beijing News on Thursday, "because it
bans drinking at lunch."
Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing.
International Herald Tribune Copyright
www.iht.com
|
