There's never any shortage of scandals to outrage China community of Web users, but when it comes to scandals involving officials, the buzz becomes a roar.

For etiquette trainers responsible for teaching officials how to engage with the public, these kinds of scandals represent quite a headache.

Pictures revealed online that show officials walking on a 100-meter-long red carpet at the inauguration ceremony of a reservoir in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, are the latest fuel for the fires of outrage.

The pictures, from the ceremony on October 18, show three officials, including a deputy governor of Henan Province, walking on the red carpet as workers trail behind. Web users said the reservoir represents a beneficial project for local residents, but that red carpets are for entertainment events and using them for the opening of a simple reservoir represents a waste of money and an embarrassment to the local government.

Jin Lan, a Beijing-based etiquette trainer who has been teaching officials and government employees for more than 10 years, said that this kind of behavior is symptomatic of a lack of image awareness among many officials. "Little things and details like that matter," she said.

The Zhengzhou city government posted an official apology on October 20, saying that the site of the ceremony was prepared and designed by an advertising and etiquette company and the government's "flashy work style and lax checks" were the reason why the situation wasn't rectified.

While the media has become a major platform where the misbehaviors of officials are exposed to the public, incidents like this show the growing public concern over government operations as well as a credibility crisis brewing within the government.

Rain on their parade

A Weibo, or microblog, thread posting on September 13 revealed that officials visited a high-tech zone in Leshan, Sichuan Province, while people nearby used water guns to make "rain" while cameras were filming the "hard-working officials."

"Chinese officials are becoming more like actors," read one comment, representative of online sentiment.

"The rate at which these kinds of bad behavior are exposed and shown online is increasing, especially as Weibo grows in popularity," said Dong Guanpeng, a director with the Institute of Public Relations and Strategic Communications under Tsinghua University. Dong said sometimes it's necessary for the government to showcase its achievements. He did add however, that care needs to be taken regarding the manner in which these achievements are presented.

Working with the State Council Information Office, the institute has been conducting training courses for government spokespeople since 2003, and now they also teach at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on courses including reputation management and crisis communication management.

The Party School of the CPC Central Committee and the Chinese Academy of Governance are two major organizations in China that offer training courses to higher-level officials and public servants.

"The core curriculum of the party school has been expanded to include media relations and core communication as compulsory courses," Dong said, adding that his institute focused on encouraging officials to adopt the right attitude, as opposed to teaching etiquette.

While Dong agrees that there's a growing dissatisfaction toward the government among the public, he said it does not necessarily mean that there are more bad officials than before. It's just that there is stricter public supervision over government employees, he explained.

Foreign differences?

A picture showing US President Barack Obama holding an umbrella by himself in the rain, when he got off a flight at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport in 2009, stirred heated online discussions as well. Many Web users reposted pictures featuring Chinese officials making other people hold umbrellas for them during official visits when it rained, and said they remained aloof, self-aggrandizing, and always approached residents with less sincerity than foreign officials.

"I don't think the comparison means too much given that China and the US have different political systems and official election policies," Dong said, explaining that according to his experience, some officials in the US also approach residents with "packaged politics" that lack sincerity.

Jin Lan believes that in addition to training in theory, officials also need to know how to behave in public with the proper manner. She said China's governments at different levels have taken image building as a must-learn course for their employees. 

"Public servants who work at public service departments are trained on how to dress, speak and greet people and how to make residents feel at home when they come with questions or complaints," said Jin, adding that higher-level officials are to be trained on more specific things about their work to present a good public image of the government.

"The lessons include properly dressing at different occasions, making speeches, taking phone calls from residents, how to behave at press conferences and during meals, and how to turn down people who try to bribe them with cash or luxury items," Jin said, adding that the scandals that get attention online also get attention in class.

"I introduce cases of improper public presentations among officials, and suggest my students remain honest and self-disciplined" Jin said, noting that the class discusses examples including the corrupt Shaanxi official Yang Dacai, who was found wearing luxury watches far beyond his means, and the "diary scandals," in which officials wrote about their sexual experiences with different women and how they took bribes.

Zhu Lijia, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, told the Global Times that image management is a crucial issue for the government. "Reports on corrupt, dishonest officials and poor levels of transparency on behalf of the government have already led to deteriorating government credibility," he said. "The media, especially Weibo, is making problems, even though they are not necessarily big scandals, more easily found."

The cultivation of personal standards matters the most when it comes to image management, he added.