Officials in China ate up US$48bn in banquets in 2012

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-05-14

Chefs prepare a banquet in Beijing. (Photo/CFP)

Chinese officials ate through 300 billion yuan (US$48 billion) worth of public-funded dining receptions and functions in 2012, reports the Chinese-language Beijing News.

Taking the average cost of each meal to be 1,000 yuan (US$160), that means there were around 300 million public-funded meals in China that year, or around 820,000 a day.

The staggering numbers were estimated by the Jiusan Society, one of the eight legally recognized political parties in China that follow the direction of the Communist Party.

Professor Zhu Guangming from the Beijing Normal University claims that officials, in many places across China, get restless if they don't have dining functions to attend. Some local government officials even spend about 70% of their energy on the dining table, he added.

Official functions are a hotbed for corruption and is a major cause of conflicts between the government and the public, Zhu said.

An investigation conducted by China's National Bureau of Statistics in March discovered that in 2012, departmental-level cadres from the central government averaged 1.1 dining functions per week while department-level cadres from provincial governments averaged slightly higher at 1.3.

The situation is much worse at the grassroots level. Figures show that mayors average 15.1 public-funded meals a week, while county heads average 18.2, the equivalent of 3.6 a day in a five-day working week.

Since Chinese president and party chief Xi Jinping came to power and initiated a campaign against official extravagance and excess last year, the number of public-funded meals have declined significantly. The numbers indicate that central government officials now only average 0.2 meals per week, compared to 0.5 meals for provincial-level officials, 10.2 meals for mayors and 12.2 times for county heads.

The deputy financial chief of an unnamed county told the Beijing News that in the year since Xi initiated the campaign, their province saved around 14 million yuan (US$2.2 million) in travel and meal expenses. In the first 10 months of 2013, the funds dedicated to paying for receptions dropped by 30%, the official said, adding that the budget for receiving guests by the average public servant was also reduced from 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) a year to 9,000 yuan (US$1,440).

As public-funded meals fall, so has the business of dining establishments frequented by officials. Figures show that in the first two months of 2013, the increase in profits of upscale dining venues fell by 3.3% year-on-year, with the operating revenue of such restaurants falling by 35% in Beijing, 20% in Shanghai and 25% in Ningbo in eastern China's Zhejiang province.

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