China Economic Review
Charting China’s changing economic terrain · Since 1990
No bars, no mistresses
November 17, 2009
Qi Peiwen, a party discipline enforcer, told officials in southern China, "It’s just not possible to keep a mistress on your salary because maintaining this sort of extravagant lifestyle requires a large amount of cash money. So what do you do if you don’t have the money? Naturally, you’ll use the power at your disposal to go find some." The message was reinforced in a series of speeches at party academies last month by Li Yuanchao. He runs the organization department that controls senior appointments. He has the original thought that the morality drive might stem from "the idea that pleasure-loving people don’t work as hard as they should".
Chinese have toiled for 30 years to build their country’s economic might, and "doubtless the leadership has noticed that in other societies, the prosperity-creating generation is likely to be succeeded by a frivolous generation," Dreyer said.
The current campaign coincides with the sentencing of 16 high-ranking officials this year, four times more than last year.
AP reports June Teufel Dreyer, a China expert at the University of Miami, said officials and others are likely to initially offer minimal compliance and that the campaign will then lose steam.
She said, "Then, gradually, the old patterns will reassert themselves".