Leaked Documents Reveal Chinese Government’s Corruption, Bureaucrats’ Incompetence

Parents wait outside a school in Tongliao, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia on September 10, 2020. NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images

Internal documents from the Inner Mongolia government revealed that local bureaucrats were incompetent and corrupt.

The government of Hulunbuir city arranged ten inspection teams composed of senior officials to probe different government departments and organs from late March to late May.

Later, the inspection teams finished 11 reports and sent them to the municipal government. A trusted source shared these reports with The Epoch Times recently.

The inspection teams reported that each government bureau spent large sums of money without a proper decision process since 2013. Some departments failed to keep proper records of their assets. Officials also spent government money for their personal travel and other expenses, the reports revealed.

Undestroyed Documents

In May, the central government deemed all COVID-19-related data to be state secrets.

The Hulunbuir government was asked to destroy certain documents, but the inspection team found that the government bureau in charge of the task was not able to do so effectively.

“[Paper shredding] machines are very slow… It’s very possible that the secret documents would be leaked when the bureau transports them. There are tons of coronavirus epidemic-related secret documents that should be destroyed but weren’t. They were saved in storage,” the report stated.

Internal report from the Hulunbuir government reported that "dozens of tons" of pandemic-related documents were not destroyed as the central government requested. Provided to The Epoch Times by insider

Coal Mines

Inner Mongolia is one of China’s biggest coal production regions. The inspection reports criticized that coal mines in Hulunbuir didn’t follow pollution control and environment protection requirements.

Also, because coal mines did not pay attention to production safety, at least 54 people died in mining accidents since 2000, the reports stated.

After inspecting state-run and private coal mines in Manzhouli city, Chen Barag Banner, and Jalainur District, one team found that “key parts of many important documents were selectively lost.”

These documents include environment protection-related documents; archived documents about small-sized mines, which were closed and merged with large-sized ones according to a central government mandate; and records showing government approval for companies to develop mines.

The report pointed out that the documents were likely lost due to “corruption and bureaucratic incompetence.”

“Officials signed fake contracts to give permission to private enterprises to develop mines without first conducting an evaluation… Officials teamed up with entrepreneurs to cheat state property,” the report stated.

In one instance, officials claimed three mines’ resources were depleted, but the mines continued production in the following years. The inspection team suspected that the officials intentionally made the wrong claim and in exchange, received benefits from the mining company. Because all land is government-owned in China, companies usually must pay the local government commission and taxes for their mining production.

Internal report from the Hulunbuir government listed key documents that were lost or missing. Provided to The Epoch Times by insider

Poverty Alleviation

Following Beijing’s “poverty alleviation” policy, which provides financial assistance to people living below the government-designated poverty line, the Hulunbuir branch of Red Cross China allocated donations to 3,297 poor citizens since 2013, one document stated. Red Cross China, unlike its international counterparts, is directly funded and operated by the Chinese regime.

But an inspection team found that 2,619 were actually government staff who had incomes above the poverty line. Only 373 people who received donations were actually poor, according to the report.

The report emphasized that there were many poor people living in Hulunbuir, but the local Red Cross did not properly distribute donations to them.

Internal report from the Hulunbuir government reported that authorities requested a large number of air raid shelters to be built, but most were not completed. Provided to The Epoch Times by insider

 Air Raid Project

Many Chinese built air raids during the mid to late 1960s amid Party leader Mao Zedong’s war-mongering fervor about a potential conflict with the United States.

City governments have mandated each residential compound and village to build their own air raid shelters.

Two inspection teams visited air raid projects throughout the city.

They found that few of the projects in Hulunbuir were finished. Moreover, the finished projects were not qualified to defend against air raids.

The local government had paid real estate developers subsidies for the shelters’ construction.

But many developers built the shelters into underground parking lots, which cannot properly defend against air raids. For example, the Zhongrun Shopping mall in the Ewenki Autonomous Banner area was supposed to build a shelter with the size of 3,300 square meters (35,521 square feet). However, officials approved the space for 4,200 square meters (45,208 square feet) and the developer later built the shelter into parking lots, a report stated.

A farm road leads to cow barns in Tuanjiecun, Hulunbuir, China, on May 3, 2019. Betsy Joles/ Getty Images

In some cases, local governments collected fees from residential apartment developers and then approved them for building the shelters—but did not actually construct them.

In total, misuse of the government’s air raid shelter budgets reached over 300 million yuan ($43.9 million), the reports stated, noting that these cases were likely related to local corruption.