MCLC: mistress-industrial complex

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Wed Dec 5 10:15:15 EST 2012


MCLC LIST
From: Anne Henochowicz <annemh at alumni.upenn.edu>
Subject: mistress-industrial complex
***********************************************************

Source: Foreign Policy (12/3/12):
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/03/the_mistress_industrial_co
mplex

The Mistress-Industrial Complex
Is adultery the key to solving China’s corruption problem?
BY CHRISTINA LARSON

BEIJING - Among the many notable features of the latest grainy sex tape
<http://shanghaiist.com/2012/11/23/sex_tape_of_chongqing_official_and.php>
circulating on the Chinese Internet -- a video of former Chongqing
official Lei Zhengfu atop his then-18-year-old mistress in 2007 -- perhaps
the most intriguing is the angle from which it was shot. Someone placed a
rudimentary video camera, or perhaps a camera phone, on a low dresser
adjacent to a hotel bed and pointed it upwards. The pale slender woman is
barely visible, but Lei's face, grunting in the throes of pleasure, is in
full view.

As the amateur porn made waves online after it surfaced on Nov. 20,
Chongqing's Commission for Discipline Inspection, the organ responsible
for dealing with corruption and wrongdoing among party members, determined
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-11/26/c_131999350.htm> that
the man in the video was indeed Lei. (He initially denied it, claiming
Photoshop mischief.) Removed
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-11/23/c_131994319.htm> from
his post as district party secretary on Nov. 23, Lei is now being
investigated for party discipline infractions and graft in the
second-raciest scandal to erupt in Chongqing this year, after the March
fall of the municipality's former party boss Bo Xilai.

Conjugal entanglements of power, politics, money, and men, usually
involving multiple sex partners, are hardly new in China, but how this
video came to light was novel: Zhu Ruifeng, a 31-year-old former
investigative journalist at the respected Guangzhou province newspaper
Southern Metropolis Daily, who now runs an anti-corruption website called
"People's Supervision" in Beijing, posted the footage online in mid
November. He represents a new trend: watchdogs who both understand that
the Communist Party has a severe mistress problem, and realize that the
problem can be used as a weapon in the fight against corruption.

Zhu, who obtained the video from a whistleblower inside the Chongqing
police department, told Foreign Policy that he thinks the tape exists
because a construction company bribed Lei with women to secure lucrative
government contracts. To ensure greater leverage, Zhu says, the women were
told to secretly videotape their encounters -- hence the camera angle.
(Chongqing's foreign affairs department said on Monday the commission's
investigation is still ongoing, and that any relevant public updates will
be made available via the government's Weibo <http://weibo.com/cqszfxwb>
account.)

Once the lewd video went viral, both Western
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20522036> and Chinese
<http://bjyouth.ynet.com/3.1/1211/29/7644618.html> media outlets covered
the story. It wasn't the first sex scandal to rock China, by any means,
but the sharp contrast between the dour exterior of China's officialdom
culture, and its raunchy bedroom obsessions is still shocking. Even with
heavy censorship, in recent years China's English language state-run media
have run enough salacious content to embarrass your mother: In August, the
nationalistic tabloid Global Times
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/726211.shtml> ran a story about two
male officials in Anhui province under scrutiny after photos of a
five-person orgy in a hotel room circulated online. In 2010, China Daily
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-03/03/content_9528425.htm> ran
diary excerpts from a Guangxi province official convicted of accepting
bribes after his meticulous sex-cum-graft diaries were posted online.
(Among the entries: "Womanizing is on the right track. It's been a lucky
year with women. I need to pay attention to my health with so many sex
partners.") To be sure, details are often suppressed: When China's former
railway minister Liu Zhijun was deposed on corruption charges in February
2011, a leaked Central Propaganda Bureau memo instructed
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/world/asia/10mistress.html?pagewanted=al
l&_r=0>: "All media are not to report or hype the news that Liu Zhijun had
18 mistresses."

The Chongqing sex-bribes-videotape saga comes to light just days after Xi
Jinping, who was appointed Communist Party chairman in mid-November, made
anti-corruption pledges a centerpiece of an important speech: "Much
evidence tells us that worsening corruption's only outcome will be the end
of the party and the end of the state. We must be vigilant," he told top
officials in Beijing; Xi also likened graft
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/19/us-china-politics-graft-idUSBRE8
AI03A20121119> to "worms breeding in decaying matter." Whether or not Xi's
intentions are genuine, similar pledges have been repeated for more than a
decade. So how, exactly, do you crack down on corruption in China?

Li Chengyan, a professor at Peking University's Research Center for
Government Integrity, has an idea: Involve the mistresses. No, seriously.
A staunch party loyalist, he is researching the role of kept women, or
ernai, as whistleblowers, intentionally or otherwise. "The phenomenon of
mistresses is so common in Chinese history, but the scale today is really
unprecedented," says Li, who thinks the problem is caused by loopholes in
the discipline system and lack of effective supervision. "If we examine
corrupt officials, about 80 to 90 percent of them also have mistresses."

Li sees a connection between China's modern concubine culture and its
runaway graft: the "emperor psychology" of the unrestrained: "Absolute
power corrupts absolutely. When officials have absolute power, they become
bold to ignore the law and social norms and do everything they like." This
ultimately hurts the party: "It's misleading to think that keeping a
mistress is not a big problem -- that it won't affect the official's main
work, records, and achievements. Temptation brings temptation."

But where others see moral hazard, Li also sees a silver lining. "Many
corruption investigations begin with information or lawsuits from the
mistresses. Why not? They have direct knowledge of the officials'
behavior." Eleven mistresses of a Shaanxi province official -- many of
them wives of his subordinates -- exposed
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/07/us-china-mistresses-odd-idUSPEK3
6711520070907> his dealings in 2007 after their families stopped
prospering. The mistress of a former Navy vice-admiral ratted
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/china.jonathanwatts> him out
in 2006 after he rebuffed demands for continued financial support for her
and their secret love child. "She wanted compensation to buy a house and
raise the kid as a condition to end the relationship," says Li. "Changes
in relationship status always produce unstable results." More tragically
<http://www.scmp.com/article/604869/corruption-storybook-has-no-final-chapt
er>, an official in Shandong province was executed in 2007 for graft and
murder after his former mistress died in a peculiar car-bomb explosion,
and a police investigation turned up explicit photos of the estranged
couple.

Zhu, the investigative journalist, says he hopes to break the cycle where
"officials protect each other" from leaks about their bribe-taking and
outsized sex lives. One tape at a time?

Christina Larson is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy.






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