From the Financial Times (link)
A Chinese scholar’s calculation that government officials spend more than Rmb200bn (¬£14bn, $25bn, ‚Ǩ20.3bn) a year of state funds on food and drink has sparked a rare public debate over the publicly funded perks enjoyed by the Communist party-led bureaucracy.
The estimate by Zhu Lijia of the China National School of Administration was published in March in the Study Times, a newspaper published by the ruling Communist party’s own school for leading cadres.
Prof Zhu wrote that China also had at least 4m vehicles for official use and that officials’ overseas travel costs would now be far above the Rmb300bn he said was spent by the government in 1999.
