Official sacked for costly lifestyle

By Wang Qian and Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-30 07:36

Civil servants should listen to the public and behave in a manner that is appropriate to their status, a senior Nanjing official was quoted as saying in the Yangtze Evening News Monday.

Zhu Shanlu, Party secretary of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, was speaking following the news that a fellow city official, Zhou Jiugeng had been sacked on Sunday after a photograph showing him wearing an expensive watch and smoking high-priced cigarettes was posted on the Internet.

The action shows how the Internet is becoming an increasingly important medium to monitor officials, Zhu said.

Zhou, the former director of the real estate administration for the Jiangning district of Nanjing, was fired for using government money to buy expensive cigarettes, an official surnamed Jing from the city's letter and call office told China Daily yesterday.

He is being investigated for his lavish lifestyle, he said.

The 48-year-old property official became the focus of a media debate after telling the Xinhua News Agency on Dec 11 that real estate developers should be punished if they sell their properties at less than cost price.

Following a public online manhunt, a picture of Zhou was posted on the Web showing him with a pack of Nanjing 95 Imperial cigarettes, which cost about 150 yuan ($22).

The image also showed him wearing a Swiss-made Vacheron Constantin watch, which retails at about 100,000 yuan in China.

Following the publication of the photograph, the local government launched an investigation into Zhou's finances.

Gao Xinmin, a professor with the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee said yesterday: "The Internet provides a new way for people to supervise officials, but what really matters is that the government listens to their voice and takes action."

While online manhunts can help fight corruption, they must be properly used or they can infringe on people's basic human rights, he said.

In 2005, Zheng Dashui, a procurement official from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, was the first to be made known to prosecutors via an online tip-off.

He was later sentenced to seven years' jail for taking bribes of almost 500,000 yuan.

According to figures from the Supreme People's Procuratorate, prosecutors got about 10,000 tips a year in 2001 and 2002, but the number rose to 30,000 after 2006.