Men fall because of women, the Chinese saying hits the nail right on the head. Translated from China News Agency:
Ninety percent of the fallen minister-level officials over the past five years kept mistresses, according to Chinese authorities and an exhibition of corruption cases by the Supreme Procuratorate of China in Beijing.
Sixteen provincial governor- or minister-level officials were downed in the major corruption crack-downs over the past half decade, including Shanghai former secretary Chen Liangyu (陈良宇), and Anhui former vice governor Wang Huaizhong (王怀忠).
Chinese government records show that in years 2003, 2005 and 2006, respectively, 170,000, 110,000 and 90,000 party members were prosecuted for discipline breaches. Good news is, the number of cracked-down cadres is declining. The bad news, though not unbelievable, is that 14 of the 16 big shots kept mistresses and many abused their power in profit-mongering, in a lot of cases out of lucrative land deals.
A common lesson is, most of these men grew out of poor families and rose all the way up the ladder with years of hard work, but in the end they couldn’t resist the lust, and money of course. Former Jiangxi vice governor Hu Changqing (ËÉ°ÈïøÊ∏Ö) made a trip to Guangzhou just for his “sweetheart” while leaving work behind. Former National Bureau of Statistics head Qiu Xiaohua (ÈDZÊôìÂçé) had a son with his mistress. [Full Text in Chinese]
[Image: an exhibition of high-level corruption cases by China’s Supreme Procuratorate, via sina.com]