Hebei official under investigation regarding tourism project

A government official in North China's Hebei province was placed under investigation after a scandal on a costly tourism project in Zhangjiakou city was exposed by a film director, according to the provincial anti-graft watchdog.

Zhang Zhiyou, deputy secretary of the Communist Party of China Wanquan District Committee and also head of the Wanquan district government in Zhangjiakou, is suspected of "seriously violating Party discipline and laws", the Hebei Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Hebei Supervisory Commission said on Thursday.

Although the watchdog didn't mention Zhang's relationship to the scandal, the probe immediately followed an online real-name denunciation about the project in Wanquan district.

Chen Xi, a film director, published an article on WeChat on June 24 in which he said the funds for making a water-curtain movie in the district had been greatly reduced after subcontracting several times, Xinhua News Agency reported.

According to Chen, the project had a 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) investment, but in the end only 1.35 million yuan was left that could be used for actual filmmaking work.

"The article was written to demand payments," Chen said in a subsequent article, adding that he had deleted it because payments were made to him after the article appeared.

However, the claim by Chen prompted widespread attention online. Netizens are mainly curious about why a poverty-stricken district would spend so much money on a film project and they wonder if government officials had taken bribes from project companies.

Wanquan county in Zhangjiakou changed into a district in 2016, and was on a national list of poor counties before May. The project was nailed down last year when Wanquan was still in poverty, Xinhua reported.

The filmmaking project, with a musical fountain project, was initiated to boost local tourism development, Huang Xiaochen, head of the cultural and tourism bureau in Wanquan, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Special investigation teams from the district and Zhangjiakou city have started a probe into the project, according to an official Zhangjiakou WeChat account.

High-level provincial officials, including Wang Dongfeng, secretary of the CPC Hebei Provincial Committee, demanded a serious investigation and said violators of the law will be seriously dealt with.