China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee General Office Special Research Fellow, Wang Xishin, provided this number during the “News 1+1” program. The 900 billion Yuan expenditure seemed a shock to the program host, Chai Jin, who repeatedly asked, “Say that again, how much?” Wang reaffirmed that, “The public funding for meals, international travel, and transportation, are 900 billion Yuan per year. It is 30 percent of the Nation’s administrative expenses.”
Chai Jin asked immediately, “Didn’t the Ministry of Finance publicize it to be 29 billion Yuan only?” Wang Xishin answered, “Perhaps they used a different statistical approach. The Ministry of Finance could refer to the central fiscal expenditure only.”
The ¥900 billion expenditure has shocked many Chinese. One blogger exclaimed, “It’s an astronomical number.” Another blogger wrote, “What does 900 billion mean? It means the cost of building 90 Shanghai Maglev train system.” Others calculated and concluded, “That means it costs each one of us 700 yuan a year to pay these officials to eat and drink and travel abroad.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s corruption seems hopeless to many bloggers. Some mocked, “Are you surprised? That’s Communism. This is normal for the Communists.”
Others don’t consider it news, “It’s not news. A few years ago, we already knew that the governmental annual expenditure of public funds was enough to build several aircraft carriers a year.”
Read this article in the original Chinese: http://epochtimes.com/gb/8/12/6/n2353927.htm
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