By Kiki Zhao
New York Times
BEIJING >> Does it block traffic? Disrupt normal life? Is the guest list too long? The feast too lavish?
These are among the questions Communist Party officials must ponder when planning weddings or funerals, the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said this week.
“We recommend that clear standards be set for the scale of weddings and funerals, and other banquets, and how much money can be given or received,” the commission said in an article posted on its website Wednesday, detailing how to enforce guidelines issued late last year on the upright life for party members.
The article restates clauses from the guidelines on weddings, funerals and similar events, and it explains in detail how they should apply to the ceremonies, usually occasions in China for lavish banquets and cash gifts. For example, the commission says, among the ways officials can avoid bringing about “negative social impacts” is by not asking their underlings to provide services at such gatherings.
And how exactly does one not “violate national, community or the peoples’ interests” at weddings and funerals? The commission explains that the events must not “interfere with or hinder normal production, lives, work, teaching, research or traffic order.”
Since assuming power in late 2012, President Xi Jinping has waged a far-reaching campaign against official corruption, with thousands of people dismissed from office or prosecuted, often in cases that featured conspicuous displays of unexplained wealth or abuses of power.
In December, the president of the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Wang Cizhao, was removed from his position after he secured a discount for his daughter’s wedding at an art center with close ties to the conservatory, the commission reported.
In Shaanxi province, several village party secretaries received warnings for accepting “relatively large sums of cash gifts” at weddings or funerals, the commission noted.
Some local governments have already specified how cadres should hold their family ceremonies. In the northeastern city of Harbin, the government specified last year that for a wedding, the number of guests should not exceed 200, and for a funeral, the maximum number of attendees was 100. At banquets for any other family occasions, it said, only “close relatives” can be invited.
On social media, the commission’s latest explanations of what constitutes inappropriate conduct attracted critical comments.
One commenter on Weibo wrote: “These behaviors are described so vaguely, there’s no way to know what’s a violation.”
Another wrote: “When my cousin got married, he only dared have 10 wedding tables. But in our small county, we have so many relatives and friends we needed at least 30 tables!”
“This makes you guys look like a cult,” a commenter using the name LuoyingLee wrote of the rules.
Another wrote that it appeared that the Chinese were becoming “more like North Koreans.”
Yet another saw a possible advantage for unscrupulous officials. “The leaders will be so happy now,” a commenter using the name Fuzeyuji wrote. “In the past, they had to hold feasts to order receive gifts. Now they can receive gifts without having to give feasts.”
Some officials may find the tighter standards simply too daunting. Last year, more than 36,600 party officials were punished for violating the party’s austerity guidelines, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
Last November, a village leader in Shaanxi province resigned after the local party discipline inspection commission refused to let him invite as many guests as he wanted to his son’s wedding, Beijing Youth Daily reported. The leader said he had too many friends and relatives, so the only way to hold a proper wedding for his son was to relinquish his post.
