The holiday hijinks would have gone unnoticed if the group’s travel agent hadn’t left his briefcase behind on a subway platform in Shanghai.
Subsequently discovered by a Chinese IT engineer with a political blog, the briefcase contained the names of the travelers, itineraries, invitation letters and hefty invoices addressed to civic officials in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province and nearby Xinyu, Jiangxi province, where the comrades were employed in various government departments, including the departments of transport and education.
Using the name ‘Chimei Wangliang 2009,’ the anonymous blogger posted 37 photographs of the documents on the Internet, and informed the two civic governments of his find.
“This could explain the government’s high administrative costs,” he quipped, noting one road trip lightened China’s public purse by nearly $100,000.
Key among the documents was an invitation letter from former Vancouver councilor, Don Lee.

It read: “During my two terms as a Vancouver city councilor, I have invited over 130 government official delegations from the People’s Republic of China to Canada for the purpose of furthering relationships in cultural and educational exchanges, as well as strengthening the cooperation in trade and economic development.”
Don Lee, admired for his integrity and hard work, was critically ailing in a hospice when the invitation letter was reportedly written, and had died of cancer by the time the Chinese officials arrived in Canada in May.
The case of the wander lusting Chinese officials has sparked widespread public condemnation in the communist state.
Thousands of Chinese officials go abroad every year for alleged study tours, but the documents posted on the Internet blog show some of them are simply tourists using public funds.

Additionally, the blogger revealed, official invitation letters used to secure these trips abroad, are often paid for with taxpayer’s money.
The post alleged the officials bought four invitation letters for international travel at a price of 11,520 yuan (nearly $2,200) each.
“The Party committee and city government attach importance to the allegations of public money being spent lavishly and an investigation has been launched,” said Liu Yongbin, deputy director of the publicity department of the Xinyu committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Officials gambling and spending government money on shopping sprees and sightseeing during overseas trips is hardly new. But exposing the practice in lurid detail on the Internet certainly is.
“These are public resources, and people have the right to know how they were used,” Wang Xixin, a law professor at Peking University, told The Associated Press.


Government junkets with loosely defined training goals are a favorite perk for Chinese bureaucrats, who until recently had little chance to travel abroad.
But China appears to be now cracking down on the practice.
Instead of spending one trip training at Northwestern Polytechnic University in Fremont, California, as officially claimed, the latest high-flying group actually visited tourist attractions such as Stanley Park, Niagara Falls, the United National Headquarters in New York, nightclubs in San Francisco, the Statue of Liberty and Las Vegas casinos.
China’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA), which is in charge of approving applications for local government officials’ overseas visits, has since disqualified Northwestern Polytechnic from arranging government-paid training courses.

The SAFEA said in a statement on its website that Northwestern provided an “unfaithful schedule” on an application to arrange a visit by officials.
Additionally, SAFEA said in its statement that all government-funded trips are banned from going to Las Vegas, the famous gambling city in Nevada.
Tao Shimei, director of one Chinese disciplinary department for Wenzhou’s Communist Party committee denied reports that the 23 officials had visited casinos and adult shows in Las Vegas, but admitted that they had stayed at the Sahara Hotel & Casino at a cost of $700 per night per visitor.
“It was the first overseas trip for most of them and they were very discreet,” she said.
But the posted documents reveal the officials did more than sight see and shop on their state-funded trips.
“The guide did a great job. . . including the homosexual show,” wrote one of a stop in San Francisco.
The authenticity of the documents has not been independently verified, but the trips have been confirmed by China and the party’s top official for discipline, He Guoqiang, was quoted in the Chinese press as calling for intensified efforts to combat corruption among party members.
“We must have a clear vision on this,” he told officials at a seminar in Beijing, according to Xinhua. “The anti-corruption situation will remain grave and complicated.”

This is not the first exposed scandal involving government officials taking suspicions overseas travels.
Last August the CPC demoted a senior law enforcement officer who led a 10-member delegation to Finland on a forged official invitation only to be refused entry.
Xu Wenai was removed from his post as second in charge of China’s Anhui province for wasting public money on the abortive journey, which resulted in the Chinese official being deported the day after their arrival in Finland.
–with News Services