President Xi Jinping urges northeast China officials to make more breakthroughs to restore the region's role as a major heavy industrial hub in the country. (Photo : Reuters)
It seems that the fight against corruption takes no holiday even on the traditional Chinese New Year as China's anti-corruption agents are working full-time even during the Lunar Year festivities.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced before the holidays that the committee had successfully shamed 855 officials for allegations related to the Lunar New Year alone.
To ensure that officials do not abuse, a prosecutor presented an updated record of corruption cases resolved in courts last year, with pledges of doing more for the coming year. Chinese President Xi Jinping made it clear that the holidays must be used also as a platform to fight corruption.
The morning before the New Year's Eve, the president greeted the Party officials and instructed them to be "sober and avoid empty talk" especiallly on the Year of the Goat. As part of Xi's campaign on frugality, the president's table and those who sat around him are devoid of any decorations, not even tea cups.
The annual television gala, in which short skits of Xi's anti-corruption campaign were included, had been received by the Chinese audience with sober mentality.
Among the usual gala presentation of singers, magicians, contortionists, cetain segments were deliberately inserted, consisting of low-budget stages and skits that were all done for the war on corruption.
A sample of these clips, which drew negative reactions, begins with a cadre sleeping in an office and ends with two comedians talking about it.
Comments on Chinese social media site Sina Weibo dismiss the propaganda as weak, trying to be fashionable yet falls short, and so nothing interesting.
However, an unknown animator who published three short animations online on New Year's Day illustrates of mass line campaign that strengthens the party by improving the cadres. The shorts feature President Xi taking out the "tigers" representing the corrupt officials.
Xinhua News Agency promoted the shorts on their website, calling them a "hit." Comments on the video were mostly positive, with Sina Weibo users mostly commenting to the tune of all-out support for President Xi. Other comments praise Xi as a very capable leader, a true party cadre that all party cadres should emulate.
