Chinese officialdom has been rocked in recent years by numerous scandals wherein corrupt local officials have their jobs, their ill-begotten fortunes and even their freedom after brazenly showing off the fruits of their misconduct.
Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Work Safety chief Yang Dacai earned the nickname "Watch Brother" in 2012 after he was photographed at the scene of a deadly traffic accident grinning broadly and wearing an expensive wrist watch. Netizens performed a human flesh search thereafter and found images of him wearing almost a dozen different luxury watches. The next month, he was removed from his positions and sentenced to 14 years in prison the following year.
In January of this year, a local official in Heilongjiang Province similarly became the target of public outrage after he was photographed at the scene of a horrific blaze his flashy, USD2,000 Moncler down jacket
READ MORE: Fury online as official wears RMB11,600 jacket while inspecting fire devastation
Mao Shaolie, the former deputy mayor of Hezhou in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was probably onto the right idea, then, when he "pretended to be poor" for over a decade and a half in order to throw the public off his scent.
Before he was sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment at the beginning of April, Mao had put aside over RMB30 million in bribes that he took over 16 years.
According to People's Daily, Mao even acquired a stellar reputation for frugality and fiscal prudence by "wearing plain and simple old clothes" and "broken belts" between 1996 and 2012.
What are we to take from this bizarre tale? Perhaps instead of waiting for corrupt officials to slip up and wear an armful of Rolexes, increased transparency and scrutiny from the public and press could rein in the corrosive graft eating away at the Chinese party-state?
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