No More Luxury Stays For Chinese Officials

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Mar 3rd 2009 at 12:01AM

All around the world governments are cracking down on spending. Most recently it was members of the Chinese government who got in trouble for a junket. The Daily Telegraph says that 14 officials from the southern province of Guangdong ended up in one of the flashiest hotels in the world, the seven-star Burj al-Arab in Dubai. The stay at the hotel was part of a two-week tour around Africa and the Middle East that reportedly included a trip to buy diamonds. Chinese bloggers exposed the story and now the leader of the trip has lost his job and has to repay costs that work out to around $65,000.

These trips seem to be a persistent problem in China much as they are elsewhere as government waste exists in all places. Last December, officials from Zhejiang spent around $95,000 on a trip to the U.S. and officials from Xinyu spent around $48,000 on a trip to Canada. China's economy is in the doldrums too and so Beijing has issued new rules which require politicians to set an example of modest fiscal behavior. Expense accounts have been restricted and there is also a freeze on building new government offices.

Tags: burj al arab, BurjAlArab, china, dubai, government