Covered by China’s politically omnipotent one-party system, Party officials are notorious for using their power to commit all variety of wrongdoing. The following quotes, gathered by Chinese netizens, reflect the officials’ attitude towards the people they supposedly serve.
#7— ‘When you threaten me, you threaten the Party.’
A Chinese couple in Sichuan Province, southwest China, had invested 700,000 yuan to build a treatment plant to recycle rock waste. Last year, when they met with district official Luo Song to discuss complications regarding the plant’s functioning, Luo said “if you threaten me, you are threatening the Party.”
His words were recorded on video and he was suspended from his job and put under investigation the next day, the state-run Xinhua reported.
#6— ‘Do you know what crime is? It is a crime to oppose the government.’
In 2010, Wang Yinfeng, district party secretary in the province-level municipality of Chongqing, was displeased by a construction project underway near a government office and demanded it be suspended despite there being no legal basis to do so.
Citing the principles of feng shui, an ancient Chinese philosophy used for the auspicious and harmonious arrangement of plants, buildings, and other objects, Wang had started a shouting match with the developer, the state-run People’s Daily reported that October.
When speaking to the state media, Wang seems to have continued in the spirit of his earlier tirade: “Do you know what crime is? It is a crime to oppose the government,” he said.
#5— ‘If the police don’t beat people, what is the point of having police?’
In China, the authorities often team up with real estate developers to gang up on those harmed by construction projects.
Two years ago, a small business owner in eastern China’s Suzhou was on his way to visit the local municipal Bureau for Letters and Calls to file a complaint about an unscrupulous real estate developer. At the bureau, he was told “If the police don’t beat up people, then what is the point of having police?”
#4— ‘I am from the court … I will spend 1 million yuan to have you killed.’
A well-known construction-related conflict occurring in 2008 involved a fight between an official working in the People’s Court in Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province, and a chief labor contractor. Lu Tao, the official, went the construction site during his working hours and beat up Zhan Jianwen, the contractor. Zhan was hospitalized following the assault.
Zhan recalled that while Lu was beating him, he shouted “I am from the court. I am a demigod representing the nation. I will spend 1 million yuan to have you killed.”
#3— ‘You dare to expose me on Xinhua, I will shut Xinhua down.’
In June 2009, when a Xinhua reporter tried to interview the director of bureau of culture in Jinan, Shandong Province, about how he had made inappropriate advances on a female teacher, the director rebuked him loudly with “Xinhua Net is a cultural unit and I am in charge of culture. You dare to expose me on Xinhua, I will shut Xinhua down.”
#2— ‘When you are raped, do you sue the guy only after giving birth to his child?’
Since March 2014, a mansion constructed by Wei Bingke, a wealthy coal mine owner, has obstructed a village road and the entrances to several neighboring dwellings in southern China’s Guangxi Province, Chinese online news portal Sina reported. The local Ministry of Land and Resources in Duoan County stated that Wei had failed to apply for a construction permit and requested that he restore the road to its normal state of access.
When a local woman surnamed Huang met with Wei Junchang, the Ministry director , he blamed her for not alerting the authorities earlier, saying “When you are raped, do you sue the guy only after giving birth to his child?”
#1— ‘The people’s demands for equality show that they simply have no shame.’
Guo Dongpo was director of an urban environmental bureau in Jilin Province, northeastern China. He was enraged when he received word that some of his underlings, unhappy with the massive inequality in pay at the bureau, had filed a complaint against him with the Communist Party’s disciplinary agency.
“Party officials should have the right to ride a horse or a Chinese palanquin,” Guo said, referring to his luxurious bonus during a New Year holiday meeting in 2011. “The people’s demands for equality show that they simply have no shame.”
Guo’s bonus was three times higher than that of the average bureau worker, Xinhua reported.
