Xi Tightens Leash on Officials' Boozing and Lavish Living
Local officials gathered in China's central city of Xinyang in March for a seminar about regulations requiring them to be frugal. Over lunch, five officials consumed four bottles of baijiu, a fiery sorghum-based spirit, flouting the very rules they had studied.
One of them died that afternoon, according to an official account, which didn't state the cause of death. The officials at the lunch tried to hide the illicit consumption of alcohol, the account said, by paying off the deceased official's family and omitting the drinking in their reports to superiors.
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