No luxury weddings for cautious Chinese officials
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Another reprobate is Han Feng, formal director of Guangxi tobacco sale bureau. He had even no special interests but proclivity to faithfully keep a diary of his agenda, including recording the taking of quite modest bribes. After several entries were put online and shocked the public, he was doomed.
After these cases, it would be unthinkable for high-ranking Chinese officials to stage a wedding like this. Of course they cannot use the Forbidden City for their wedding ceremony. Thus given the scarcity of similar events in China, the spectacular British event will draw a large Chinese audience.
I believe that many Chinese officials are financially able to manage a wedding ceremony comparable to Prince William's as well as Chelsea Clinton's. However, there is a political taboo against appearing conspicuously rich. There's nothing hidden about the source of William's wealth, given his grandmother is the largest landowner in the UK, or that of Bill Clinton, who charges as much as $100,000 for a speech. But Chinese officials' salaries aren't that high, and the public is naturally suspicious about where their wealth comes from.
Many Chinese trust their intuition that a rich official is corrupt. When some unfortunate official recklessly flaunts his wealth, a chain of events consisting of online tumult, media hype and legal investigation can end up terminating his political career. Sometimes, he can become a scapegoat for public anger over corruption, regardless of his personal guilt or innocence.
However, the public "hatred" toward official extravagance might seem a good thing. It at least reminds officials that their personal affairs matter to the public. It might help reduce the scale of vicious extravagance such as expensive banquets and exorbitant government procurement, since taxpayers are watching them all.
But the problem still remains that the public lacks effective means to really know how rich an official is and whether he can justify the source of that wealth.
Hating rich official, however, might also spoil our politics. Some aspirant officials might perhaps tactically feign a sense of frugality. They might be really rich or even corrupt, but politicians' appearance is always deceitful and the public is sometimes gullible.
Meanwhile, it is unfair to those officials who come from rich family backgrounds. They cannot even behave honestly.
Perhaps many Chinese officials lack a sense of security. They are subject to endless public mistrust and their own psychological ambivalence over their public appearance. Sometimes dishonesty is the only solution to survival, but this shouldn't be the right course of politics.
Officials have the same rights as anyone else to honestly earned wealth. Hypocrisy arises because officials cannot be fundamentally open about their true circumstances.
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