A subdistrict Party chief from Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, was suspended from his position for taking 81 local officials to Xiamen, Fujian Province, for an extravagant meeting, the Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday.
Zhou Rong, secretary of the Party work committee in the city's subdistrict of Hongshan, is currently under investigation by the city's commission for discipline inspection, for what the People's Daily revealed Saturday was a four-day meeting at a coastal resort in Xiamen that cost over 380,000 yuan ($60,992).
The report triggered fury from the public over the officials' abuse of funds as all the expenses are financed by local fiscal revenue. The costly meeting was first revealed online by a local villager.
The 81 officials from the Wuxi subdistrict stayed and met for three days from December 23, 2012 at the four-star Hotel Nikko Xiamen, where a standard room costs more than 600 yuan per night.
The list of expenses includes 186,105 yuan for air tickets, a 6,640-yuan entrance fee to visit a scenic spot and 133,680 yuan for accommodation.
The city's commission said Saturday that apart from the 6,000 yuan spent on renting the meeting room in Xiamen, all the remaining expenses should be paid by officials who participated.
According to the report, the meeting lasted only five hours while the remainder of the agenda included visiting scenic spots, one of which required a three-hour drive to another city in the province.
The trip, which was arranged by a Wuxi-based tourism company with close links to the subdistrict, occurred during regular work days.
Zhou was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the meeting could have been held at the subdistrict's meeting room but he hoped to broaden the officials' view in Xiamen.
One official participating in the meeting said that including sightseeing in conjunction with a local meeting is no big deal, as many other offices in the city have done so for a long time.
