When the cops really need a drink
A few cops in Hunan were apparently rather slow to get Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign memo. The People’s Daily reports (in Chinese) that in June 2016, police officers of the Public Security Bureau (PSB) of the impoverished Anhua County in Hunan Province “drove police cars to Maotai, Guizhou, and and illegally purchased 600 bottles of liquor.”
The town of Maotai is about 450 miles away from Anhua. Maotai liquor is China’s most famous homegrown spirit, best known abroad for the Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai 周恩来 toast of 1972 — see the toast on YouTube. It costs around 1,200 yuan ($190) a bottle for the standard variety (see Xinhua’s January update on Maotai prices — in Chinese).
By January 2017, the Anhua cops’ entire batch of Maotai had been consumed over the course of 112 dinner receptions.
Today, the Anhua County PSB announced that the five cadres responsible for the decadent behavior have been dealt with, and that the PSB office has “reflected deeply, and resolutely accepts the disciplinary inspection and the handling of the five cadres by the supervisory organs, and sincerely accepts supervision from the people and the media.”
