Wenzhou govt. to persuade official to return from Paris

Yangtse Evening Post
October 23, 2008

Newspapers earlier reported that Yang Xianghong (杨湘洪), a government officer of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, failed to return after an official visit to Paris in early October and has stayed in France for the last 18 days. Yang’s overstay has aroused suspicion of corruption. Reports also say that local government officials have been warned not to comment on the incident to the media.

Today’s Yangtse Evening Post reported that Yang has sent a letter to the Wenzhou government claiming that he was too sick for his job and wanted to resign. The government is going to send a team of three, including a medical doctor, to assess Yang’s health and persuade him to return.

The newspaper also reported that another government official Xi Weiming (忻伟民), vice director of Shanghai’s Luwan district, has also been reported missing during another official visit to Paris.

Also on the front page of the newspaper:

• To stimulate the real estate market, the government has cut the home-buying tax for first time purchases of properties under 90 square meters to 1%, from the previous 1.5%. The down payment requirement has also dropped to 20% from the previous 30%.
• The big photo shows illegal weapons confiscated in a recent ‘yanda‘ (严打), a periodic anti-criminal campaign, in Chongqing.
• A new statistic shows that the employment rate of this year’s university graduates in Jiangsu Province is about 72.36 %. The employment rate of students who studied majors which were supposed to be popular in the job market turned out lower than average; among them are: clinical medicine, journalism, law and teaching. Also, private universities performed far worse than state funded ones, with one of them in particular having only 0.78% of the graduates being able to find a job.