January 10th 2009
China Betters Blago
P
erhaps you didn’t know that the two characters that designate “China” in the incredibly complex Chinese writing system mean “middle” and “kingdom,” symbolic of the Chinese thought that they are the center of the world and all other peoples are outsiders – even when it comes to corruption.
We may have our Blogojevich, our Jefferson, our Dixon, but they’re pipsqueaks on the margins compared to how things are done in the Middle Kingdom:
Officials from China’s southern Guangdong province are reported to have gambled away more than $3m (£2m) of public money in recent years.
Chinese media reports said more than 50 officials had been investigated and six had been jailed or punished.The officials lost the money gambling at casinos in Macau, on cruise ships off Hong Kong, and betting on football matches, reports said.
The heaviest sentence was given to Wu Xingkui, the Communist Party of China (CPC) number two in the town of Yunfu.
Mr Wu was handed a four-year jail term for embezzling large sums of public money to finance his gambling habit, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.
The paper said he was found guilty of losing 520,000 yuan ($76,000) on soccer bets and 70,000 yuan playing mahjong, in addition to thousands of yuan of public money while on a cruise in Hong Kong on 1 January 2004. (BBC)
But look. I’ve always felt the whole Middle Kingdom superiority thing to be a quaint and amusing historical hold-over. After all, China may have its Wu Xingkui and other assorted small fry, but rowdy American capitalism gives us the likes of Bernard Madoff and Kenneth Lay. USA! USA!
Posted in China, Crimes and Courts, Politics & Policy | 3 Comments » | |
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January 10th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Comments
January 10th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
$3 million? What a bunch of amateurs. A single executive of Fry’s Electronics embezzled $60 million from the company for his gambling addiction.
January 10th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
We’ll add him to the Madoff/Lay list of American superiority.
And you bring up a good point, Socratease. The gambling industry – not the inoccuous “gaming” that the industry uses in referring to itself – is a terrible global presense. I don’t have any stats, and I don’t know if they’re obtainable, but I’d bet that gambling causes more grief globally than alcohol or drugs – yet our “public servants” fall all over themselves to push more gambling on us. Why? Because the “gaming” industry is generous with political contributions.