Yan Linkun, a vice chairman of Yunnan Mining Co. and local political advisor, smashed equipment at a boarding gate at Kunming Changshui Airport after missing two flights on February 19. From Josh Chin at the Wall Street Journal, with the airport surveillance video embedded below:
Mr. Yan and his family actually missed two flights that day, according to the report. They first arrived late to board their flight from Kunming to Guangzhou in the morning after going to eat breakfast in the airport, then missed another flight in the afternoon after misremembering the departure time. As the video shows, Mr. Yan grew irate when told the family would not be allowed through the gate for a second time and proceeded to smash the area to pieces while a crowd – including several security guards – looked on.
[…] A statement posted to the website of the Fengle Group, which owns Yunnan Mining, said Mr. Yan would pay to replace the computers he smashed.
[…] “Apology? I strongly demand he be sent to try to smash up an American airport,” wrote one user of Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging service. “A one-way ticket should be enough.”
The airport also came under fire from some commenters for not doing more to control a dangerous situation. “This is totally a terrorist act. Why didn’t airport security use force?” asked another Weibo user.
Jonathan Kaiman at the Guardian sees recent misbehavior by officials as a “symbol of arrogance and entitlement in China”:
The tantrum is not the only incidence of high-level misbehaviour that has gripped China during the past week. The Communist party secretary of a district bureau in Nanyang City, Henan province, drove a government car into a cinema on Sunday morning, injuring 26 people, according the state news agency Xinhua. Eight of the injured were hospitalised, two of whom remain in a critical condition.
The official, Liu Xianchong mistook the accelerator in his government-issued vehicle for the brake, reported Xinhua. The report cited local police as saying that Lie had been off work for seven months because of a cerebral infarction, a type of stroke. A special group to “handle the incident and its aftermath” was set up by the local party committee, Xinhua said. Liu has been detained.
Last week party disciplinary authorities said a former official in Shaanxi province had been expelled from the party for “serious wrongdoing” and “suspected crimes”. Yang Dacai rose to notoriety last August after he was photographed smiling at the scene of a road accident in which 36 people died. He became a symbol of official corruption when further photographs appeared on the internet of him wearing a number of luxury watches that many in China believe he could not possibly afford on a public servant’s salary.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uZQ1CTASUA&w=592&h=444]
