informal dress

I have an American friend who does business in Hunan, which normally involves black-out drinking sessions with provincial-level officials.  Not kidding about the black-out; last time he only brought one guy to back him up to a lunch banquet and doesn't remember anything between 1 pm and 6:30 pm, when he found himself in a hotel room with the Hunanese minister of health and hangers-on, who were laughing uproariously as his colleague vomited into the toilet.  

Anyway, he got a call from his chief official point-of-contact a few weeks ago, telling him that at a meeting they were going to be attending not to wear jacket or tie, because none of the officials would be. The reason was Xi's recent visit to Hunan, where he criticized the extravagent style of officialdom and called upon them to serve the people, etc.  Their reaction to this, naturally, wasn't to actually start doing real work, ditch their mistresses, etc, but to give up wearing ties, jackets, and gold watches at photo ops.

That's pretty much my expectation of Xi's push for cleaner officialdom in general; do nothing to actually change the incentives for official corruption, but put on a nicer surface so the proles don't get upset.

Comments

[Martin Wisse]

Sounds very New Labour.

[ajay]

IIRC the initial response to the leaked Abu Ghraib pictures was a clampdown on soldiers taking pictures of stuff.