Getting away with it

• Source: The Global Times
• [21:46 May 24 2009]
• Comments

By Xie Ying

As the Chinese people wept together during the deadly Sichuan earthquake, he organized an “inspection delegation” to Fujian Province where he and his pals enjoyed tourism sites on the public purse: even during three days of official national mourning last year.

Shao Liyong, former director of Binzhou Administration for Industry and Commerce in Shandong Province, was given a disciplinary warning and dismissed. But less than one year after his dismissal, he turned up as deputy director of Weihai Administration for Industry and Commerce in the same province, the Beijing News reported.

The under-fire Shandong Administration for Industry and Commerce told Xinhua News Agency that they had not broken any rules by appointing Shao. According to Article 12 of Discipline Regulations for the Chinese Communist Party, officials under Party disciplinary warning cannot be promoted, said a report published on the official website of Weihai Administration for Industry and Commerce. Shao, the article emphasized, had been demoted, not promoted. That meant his appointment conformed to rules.

“‘Not breaking any rules’ has become the shield to defend reappointment of punished officials,” wrote columnist Yan Lieshan in the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily.

But punished official Bao Junkai went one better than Shao. Though he reportedly returned to the GAQSIQ this month to be the deputy-director of another department, he actually got promoted after his punishment.

Six infants were killed and tens of thousands of others were made ill last year after drinking baby milk tainted with melamine. At the time of the scandal, Bao Junkai was deputy director-general of the food production supervision department at the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ).
In March, Bao was allegedly “disciplined” for his slack supervision of the incident. Yet four months earlier, he had been appointed head of the GAQSIQ’s Anhui bureau, the Beijing News reported last month.

Zhu Jidong, a journalist with the Xinhua News Agency, said in his blog in March that Bao took up his new post in Anhui while the nation was still gripped by the baby milk scandal.
Li Changjiang resigned as president of the GAQSIQ in September because of the scandal. Bao, it seems, fared rather better.

“This appointment pays no regard to the public’s feelings,” the Oriental Morning Post quoted an unnamed Web user as saying in a post at the People’s Daily website.

“It’s a great irony that the official was promoted rather than demoted,” the person said.
A GAQSIQ official told Xinhua, however, that Bao’s appointment did not break any laws.
“The appointment was made before the milk scandal broke, but Bao didn’t take up his new position until December due to the demands of his previous job,” he said.
“The disciplinary action came late, and they took advantage of the time lapse,” the Beijing News report said.

China’s Civil Servants Law states, “A civil servant cannot be promoted during a disciplinary action.” It says nothing about being promoted before being disciplined.

“The post of deputy director has been made accountable for the milk scandal, not Bao. So when he left, it was just an empty title,” the China Youth Daily reported last month.
Bao is not the only “empty title” to be disciplined.

Also in March, Liu Daqun, former president of the agriculture department in Hebei, where the dairy was based, was punished … he is now mayor and deputy Party secretary of Xingtai, the Beijing News reported.

“Our accountability system is not worth the paper it’s written on,” an anonymous Internet user wrote at the People’s Daily forum.

“The punishments were just temporary,” Xin Ming, a professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC told the Oriental Morning Post.

“The officials were forced out just to cool public sentiment.”

They are often reinstated “on the quiet,” he said.

Such was the case with Wang Zhenjun, the official dismissed following the disclosure of the Shanxi brick pit scandal. In March, CCTV’s News 1+1 program reported that he was working as an assistant to the mayor of Hongdong county in the province.