When Even the Officials are Fake . . .

[Randy W]

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from the Global Times

 

Govt scratching head on how to deal with plethora of fake officials

 

Just as whistle-blowers thought they had landed another big fish, a middle-aged official who kept a 18-year-old mistress, and were expecting to enjoy the government's reaction, they were told the official and his committee were both fake.

On June 22, the Party School of the CPC Central Committee announced that the school and its affiliated organizations had no staff member named Li Guangnian, and denied ever having set up a Research Center on the Theory of Scientific Outlook on Development.

. . .

Fake committee

The committee was registered by Li in Hong Kong. Before 2012 it was called the National Dynamic Investigation Committee, founded in 2010 by the Mao Zedong Academic Research Society, according to China Newsweek.

While this latter research center does exist, it is attached to a privately-owned vocational school. This excludes any possibility that Li's committee was official, since the organization allegedly behind it has no ties to the government, the report said.

Many were fooled by Li and his committee, given the difficulty of registering an organization containing China or Chinese in its name on the Chinese mainland. The vast majority of those with such names are affiliated to the government in some regard.

This explains why Li registered the committee in Hong Kong, but this deception might never have come to light unless Li had been found keeping a mistress and exposed online.

Li's purpose in carrying out this trickery is clear. By impressing clients with his fake credentials, he and his team were able to swindle them for large amounts of money.

 

 

[Randy W]

Another column on the same subject

 

1001 Chinese Tales: Fake institutes a byproduct of power-driven society

 

Phoenix Weekly has reported on the similarities of such organizations: They claim to be under the leadership of officials and the Party and adopt tone and rhetoric on Internet blogs that match the style of that used in State-run newspapers from the 1960s.

Chinese people are striving to build a fair and equal society, but the struggle for power at the helm of society remains in the way. Without power, officials seem to have nothing for people to respect, if not envy.

If power-oriented values were not pervasive in society, people like Zhang would not be so inclined to set up illegitimate institutes, so unabashedly founded. The so-called institutes further manage to go unnoticed thanks to a general strong-hold on the secrecy that shrouds official organizations.

Ordinary people know far too little about anything that smells of officialdom - even when it is presented as fraud. And because of the honesty lacking from the power-obsessed so far removed from their circles, these people could care less.

If deep-rooted societal values centered on power cannot be reversed, or at the very least, not anytime soon, then the establishment of transparent government organizations is desperately needed now.