Extramarital affairs a no-no for officials

By Wang Jingqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-08 07:41

Officials in Meishan city, Sichuan province have been banned from taking lovers outside marriage, as well as sleeping during meetings.

A guideline titled Behavior Standards for Officials of Meishan After Eight Hours of Work was released with four other directions designed to strengthen discipline among county-level or higher officials in Meishan, the West China Metropolitan News reported yesterday.

"Officials should persist in being upright and honest after work hours, should not have too close relations with people that are interest related, and should not have abnormal relations with people of the opposite sex," it reads.

Some officials in China have been notorious for having numerous lovers.

According to statistics by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, 90 percent of provincial or ministry level officials found guilty of corruption have had lovers.

Jiang Renfu, secretary of the CPC Meishan Municipal Committee, said: "Meishan is faced with many tasks and difficulties. And emphasizing discipline among our officials is actually caring about them and protecting them in case they make mistakes."

He said that officials should be audacious in work, and circumspective in discipline and interest.

"We should be open-minded and with a spirit of enterprise in career, caring little of the old rules; while facing discipline and interest, we should be 'timid' and cautious, try not to cross the line," he said.

Among notorious adulterers is Xu Qiyao, former director of the construction bureau of Jiangsu province, who was reported to have had 146 lovers during his official term.

He is still referred as "the one who had the most lovers" on the Internet. He was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve in 2001 for taking bribes.

Jin Weizhi, who had 13 lovers when he was general manager of the State-owned Nanjing Dairy Products Company in Jiangsu province, once said that he thought it was common among officials to have lovers as "how many women you might have depends on how powerful you are" and "they are a symbol of your status, or others will look down upon you."

Yang Hongshan, professor of public administration school of Renmin University of China in Beijing, said the practice of extramarital affairs reveals problems with the country's supervisory system.

"Once a practice becomes popular, we cannot explain it away by blaming an individual's morality and values. It is because there is no supervision from outside of the system," he said.

He added that the public and media did not have much say in evaluating the behavior of officials, and so with little self-control and supervision, the seemingly controversial practice became common.

Jiang told the report that officials should not think of having privilege or power, but should lead in practicing discipline and following the rules.

Other rules in Meishan's new regulations bans officials from sleeping or talking during meetings. They are also banned from being late or absent from meetings without permission and taking phone calls in meetings.

If an official is found to have broken the rules more than once, the government will tell local media and the person will be fined 1,000 yuan ($146). For those who break the rules more than twice, the official's department will be disqualified from yearly evaluation, an activity to reward departments with evaluations.