A Chinese governor’s rare admission of having given a misleading account about the plight of coal miners has prompted new laments among the public about pervasive deception practiced by China’s bureaucracy, with even state media calling on officials to be more truthful.
Heilongjiang Governor Lu Hao’s (陸昊) assertion that 80,000 miners at his province’s largest mining company had been fully paid triggered an angry protest by the workers. The governor soon backtracked and pledged to pay back wages.
His candor won some applause, but it also reignited questions online and even in state media about how he could have been so easily misinformed on such an important matter.
Photo: AP
“There’s hardly any thread of authenticity these days in the reports from subordinates to their supervisors in the government and the superiors shall by no means believe any of those reports,” wrote Hua Yuxi, a Chinese blogger.
“Their statistics, their work summaries, and their achievements are all fully inflated.”
The incident came just months after the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that officials in China’s northeast admitted they had inflated economic data, apparently to meet targets and impress their superiors.
In one case, a county in Liaoning Province inflated its fiscal revenue by 847 million yuan (US$131 million) for 2013, state auditors reported last year.
Xinhua said local governments had cooked the books to cover up fabricated data on everything from economic growth to investments, consumption, trade, urban projects and urban incomes, before investigators and cooperating officials uncovered the scam.
“Although officials at all levels know the dangers of inflated statistics, they feel they have no choice when they feel the pressure from performance evaluation, regional competition and promotions for themselves,” Xinhua said.
The deceptions harken back to some of the darkest periods in recent Chinese history, particularly the 1958-1961 Great Leap Forward, when communes were rapidly formed and the communist government vowed to surpass the West economically and show the superiority of its socialist system.
In answering to Beijing’s hopes and demands, village cadres across the country massively inflated their reported yields of wheat and rice and the lies were trumpeted in state media. The lesson was costly as the government took possession of what were thought to be vast grain surpluses, contributing to a famine that claimed an estimated 30 million lives.
Six decades on, discussion of that tragedy remains largely taboo and official deceptions show no sign of departing the ways of Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and other communist elites who considered that the truth had to be malleable in the service of the socialist cause.
Even Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) has reportedly spoken of his distrust of official information. Quoted in a US diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, Li, then a provincial Chinese Communist Party secretary, described Chinese economic statistics as “man-made” and “for reference only,” saying he preferred to look at raw data such as electricity consumption, bank loans and the cargo volume moved by railways.
No less than the party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported last year that local cadres in an unnamed Chinese village ordered children to drape themselves in white fertilizer bags and pretend to be a herd of sheep to please higher ranking officials on a poverty reduction inspection tour.
Then came the gaffe by Lu, who was speaking during the annual national legislature in Beijing on the challenges of orderly reducing the payrolls of the province’s largest publicly owned mining company, Longmay Mining Holding Group Co, Ltd, which has been hemorrhaging cash and cannot make timely payments to its more than 200,000 employees.
Lu said Longmay made sure that 80,000 miners were not owed “even a cent.”
The remarks seemed aimed at showing that Longmay and the provincial leadership were meeting the central government’s expectations for competently handling economic challenges.
Carried in state media, Lu’s remarks infuriated Longmay miners, who said they had not been paid in six months. Thousands of them and their families took to the streets on March 12 to demand back pay.
The same day, Lu’s office admitted his error, saying he had been misinformed. It issued a stern warning demanding officials tell the truth in briefing provincial leaders about important information and vowed to punish those less forthcoming.
EUROPEAN FUTURE? Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says only he could secure EU membership, but challenges remain in dealing with corruption and a brain drain Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama seeks to win an unprecedented fourth term, pledging to finally take the country into the EU and turn it into a hot tourist destination with some help from the Trump family. The artist-turned-politician has been pitching Albania as a trendy coastal destination, which has helped to drive up tourism arrivals to a record 11 million last year. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also joined in the rush, pledging to invest US$1.4 billion to turn a largely deserted island into a luxurious getaway. Rama is expected to win another term after yesterday’s vote. The vote would
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
CANCER: Jose Mujica earned the moniker ‘world’s poorest president’ for giving away much of his salary and living a simple life on his farm, with his wife and dog Tributes poured in on Tuesday from across Latin America following the death of former Uruguayan president Jose “Pepe” Mujica, an ex-guerrilla fighter revered by the left for his humility and progressive politics. He was 89. Mujica, who spent a dozen years behind bars for revolutionary activity, lost his battle against cancer after announcing in January that the disease had spread and he would stop treatment. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica. President, activist, guide and leader. We will miss you greatly, old friend,” Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi wrote on X. “Pepe, eternal,” a cyclist shouted out minutes later,
Myanmar’s junta chief met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the first time since seizing power, state media reported yesterday, the highest-level meeting with a key ally for the internationally sanctioned military leader. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup in 2021, overthrowing Myanmar’s brief experiment with democracy and plunging the nation into civil war. In the four years since, his armed forces have battled dozens of ethnic armed groups and rebel militias — some with close links to China — opposed to its rule. The conflict has seen Min Aung Hlaing draw condemnation from rights groups and pursued by the
RSS