MCLC: Guangxi officials told to stay sober

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Guangxi officials told to stay sober
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Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (7/11/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/guangxi-officials-told-to-st
ay-sober-on-the-job-at-least/

Guangxi Officials Told to Stay Sober (on the Job, at Least)
By AUSTIN RAMZY

China has a well-known tradition of heavy drinking at official
banquets.Credit Andy Wong/Associated Press
The rules read like something imposed on a fraternity under double-secret
probation. But as People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of China’s Communist
Party, explained 
<http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2014-07/11/nw.D110000renmrb_20140711_
2-11.htm> on Friday, they are meant for officials in the southern region
of Guangxi. Officials there now face a list of restrictions on consuming
alcohol that are meant to prevent them from reaching embarrassing and even
dangerous levels of intoxication.

According to the rules, Guangxi officials are barred from drinking on the
job; playing drinking games or otherwise forcing people to drink in public
places; being heavily drunk at any time; drinking in public while wearing
an official uniform; drinking while carrying classified materials; and
driving after drinking.

China has a well-established tradition of boozy banquets to mark all
manner of business, and local officials often find themselves called upon
to drink several times a week. The results can be disastrous. In April, a
deputy township chief in Guangxi died of alcohol poisoning
<http://szdaily.sznews.com/html/2014-04/16/content_2843726.htm> after
drinking with his colleagues at a lunch banquet. Zhong Xiefei had been on
his first day of his new job, the state news media reported.

President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption and extravagance has
targeted officials’ culture of drinking. There are some signs that the
prohibitions are cutting into alcohol consumption. Kweichow Moutai, one of
China’s most famous brands of baijiu, a powerful spirit made from sorghum
and other grains, said the crackdown on official indulgence had cut into
its heady sales growth. Kweichow Moutai estimated that sales this year
would increase only about 9 percent, the lowest rate in five years, the
state-run China Daily newspaper reported in March.

Still, drunken officials remain a problem for the Communist Party. Wang
Qikang, an executive with a state-owned tourism company, was fired and
dismissed from the party this week after a cellphone video that showed him
groping a woman on a Shanghai subway train circulated widely online. Mr.
Wang said that he had been intoxicated when he repeatedly touched a
21-year-old passenger from Taiwan on the thigh, The Shanghai Daily
reported <http://www.china.org.cn/china/2014-07/09/content_32896371.htm>.

In its report on Friday, People’s Daily quoted bits of a popular rhyme
that says drinking “spoils the Communist Party spirit and ruins the
stomach.” The full rhyme
<http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/180335870.html>, not included in the
report, tells the tale of a woman frustrated with her husband’s drinking.
She visits various party and government organs for advice, including the
Discipline Inspection Commission, which is charged with investigating
corruption.

The poem continues:

The wife went to the Discipline Inspection Commission,
At the door she met an old guard,
The old guard said:
Yesterday the bosses had a meeting,
Seven committee members, four were drunk,
the other three asleep in their hotel.