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How a fatal sex game in a Ferrari has rattled China's top leaders - thestar.com
BEIJING—China's leaders want to project a good image ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition later this year, but the Party is being hurt by a series of scandals — including reports of an orgy, an army officer assaulting a flight attendant, and fatal sex games in a Ferrari involving the son of a senior leader.
China has suspended an army officer after reports he assaulted a flight attendant spread like wildfire on the Internet, fuelling growing outrage against the misbehaviour of some government and Communist Party officials.
On Tuesday, the official Xinhua News Agency said Fang Daguo, a military official from the southern city of Guangzhou, had been suspended after he and his wife, both smelling of alcohol, had an altercation with flight attendant Zhou Yumeng over the couple's carry-on luggage.
The flight attendant published photos of her bruised arms and torn uniform on the Twitter-like microblog Sina Weibo, sparking a storm of angry comments. The local government was investigating further and had suspended the official, Xinhua said.
That scandal emerged as another one was gaining traction. The South China Morning Post on Monday cited an unnamed official in Beijing as confirming that Ling Gu, the son of a loyal aide to President Hu Jintao, was the person killed in a March 18 Ferrari accident that initially garnered only minimal coverage in China's state media.
The report said Ling was half-naked when the crash occurred and his two passengers were naked or half-dressed, suggesting they had been involved in some kind of high-speed sex game.
Details of the March accident in Beijing, which allegedly also injured two young women, have stayed under wraps in China but are leaking out via media in Hong Kong.
The Post's story came just days after the Chinese government announced Ling Gu's father had been transferred to a new position, a move that analysts say ended his ambitions for a post in the upper ranks of the top leadership. Observers said the shift appeared linked to his son's scandalous death.
On Saturday, Ling Jihua was named as the new head of the United Front Work Department and his old job as director of the general office of the Communist Party's central committee was given to Li Zhanshu — thought to be a close ally of Xi Jinping, the man tapped to the China's next president.
The media blackout around the Ferrari incident underscores official fears that the public will be outraged by another instance of excess and recklessness among China's power elites. The party has always been image conscious, air brushing photos and strictly controlling the media to send the right message.
However, the rise of the Internet and microblogs such as Sina Weibo have posed a major challenge to the party's control.
Chen Ziming, an independent scholar of politics in Beijing, said newspapers were frightened to publicize these incidents for fear of punishment, but Internet users aren't affected in the same way.
"Local governments haven't caught up. If they think they can suppress it, they are going to try. But Internet users increasingly won't tolerate this," he said.
David Zweig, a Chinese politics expert at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the Communist Party has always been more sensitive to public opinion around times of leadership change.
"The key question is whether this is a revolution where websites and microblogs will change China forever or whether it is something that only works around the time of the Party Congress," he said.
Unfortunately for the party, officials are giving plenty of ammunition to China's Internet users, who are quick to paint them as callous and out of touch with the people.
This year was already shaping up to be a rough one for the Communist Party's image, with the escape from illegal house arrest and flight into exile of blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng and the downfall of Politburo member Bo Xilai, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a British businessman.
Last month, a county government in Anhui province had to deny that participants in photos of an orgy posted online were local officials.
But Joseph Cheng, a professor political science at the City University of Hong Kong, noted that few Chinese know about the Ferrari accident and that, if they did, they might see at as too removed from their lives to worry about.
"If there's a Ferrari (crash) case with naked girls in Beijing, well, this is juicy stuff. You get cynical, you feel resentment but you don't do much. You don't protest because it's too far away."
BEIJING—China's leaders want to project a good image ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition later this year, but the Party is being hurt by a series of scandals — including reports of an orgy, an army officer assaulting a flight attendant, and fatal sex games in a Ferrari involving the son of a senior leader.
China has suspended an army officer after reports he assaulted a flight attendant spread like wildfire on the Internet, fuelling growing outrage against the misbehaviour of some government and Communist Party officials.
On Tuesday, the official Xinhua News Agency said Fang Daguo, a military official from the southern city of Guangzhou, had been suspended after he and his wife, both smelling of alcohol, had an altercation with flight attendant Zhou Yumeng over the couple's carry-on luggage.
The flight attendant published photos of her bruised arms and torn uniform on the Twitter-like microblog Sina Weibo, sparking a storm of angry comments. The local government was investigating further and had suspended the official, Xinhua said.
That scandal emerged as another one was gaining traction. The South China Morning Post on Monday cited an unnamed official in Beijing as confirming that Ling Gu, the son of a loyal aide to President Hu Jintao, was the person killed in a March 18 Ferrari accident that initially garnered only minimal coverage in China's state media.
The report said Ling was half-naked when the crash occurred and his two passengers were naked or half-dressed, suggesting they had been involved in some kind of high-speed sex game.
Details of the March accident in Beijing, which allegedly also injured two young women, have stayed under wraps in China but are leaking out via media in Hong Kong.
The Post's story came just days after the Chinese government announced Ling Gu's father had been transferred to a new position, a move that analysts say ended his ambitions for a post in the upper ranks of the top leadership. Observers said the shift appeared linked to his son's scandalous death.
On Saturday, Ling Jihua was named as the new head of the United Front Work Department and his old job as director of the general office of the Communist Party's central committee was given to Li Zhanshu — thought to be a close ally of Xi Jinping, the man tapped to the China's next president.
The media blackout around the Ferrari incident underscores official fears that the public will be outraged by another instance of excess and recklessness among China's power elites. The party has always been image conscious, air brushing photos and strictly controlling the media to send the right message.
However, the rise of the Internet and microblogs such as Sina Weibo have posed a major challenge to the party's control.
Chen Ziming, an independent scholar of politics in Beijing, said newspapers were frightened to publicize these incidents for fear of punishment, but Internet users aren't affected in the same way.
"Local governments haven't caught up. If they think they can suppress it, they are going to try. But Internet users increasingly won't tolerate this," he said.
David Zweig, a Chinese politics expert at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the Communist Party has always been more sensitive to public opinion around times of leadership change.
"The key question is whether this is a revolution where websites and microblogs will change China forever or whether it is something that only works around the time of the Party Congress," he said.
Unfortunately for the party, officials are giving plenty of ammunition to China's Internet users, who are quick to paint them as callous and out of touch with the people.
This year was already shaping up to be a rough one for the Communist Party's image, with the escape from illegal house arrest and flight into exile of blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng and the downfall of Politburo member Bo Xilai, whose wife was found guilty of murdering a British businessman.
Last month, a county government in Anhui province had to deny that participants in photos of an orgy posted online were local officials.
But Joseph Cheng, a professor political science at the City University of Hong Kong, noted that few Chinese know about the Ferrari accident and that, if they did, they might see at as too removed from their lives to worry about.
"If there's a Ferrari (crash) case with naked girls in Beijing, well, this is juicy stuff. You get cynical, you feel resentment but you don't do much. You don't protest because it's too far away."
