When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
China

New Anti-Corruption Training Courses In China Prompt Scorn

YANGZHI RIVER DAILY, CHINA DAILY(China) , EPOCH TIMES (USA)

Worldcrunch

(BEIJING) - The Chinese Communist Party has recently come up with a new bright idea on how to curb rampant corruption among China’s officialdom: training courses on how to identify conspicuous consumption.

By organizing "appraisal lessons of luxury goods and artifacts," the cadres of the party’s discipline-inspection committees will learn how to "recognize which officials are corrupt,” the Yangzhi River Daily reported, quoting from an official of the Beijing Commission for Discipline Inspection.

The news has provoked an immediate wave of both criticism and cackles on China’s internet. “This is a way for the anti-corruption officials themselves to learn how to be corrupt without getting caught... Even a pig would laugh at such idea!” said the Epoch Times citing a netizen’s words. “So now these officials know how to tell what is fake, what is genuine and what to accept, what to refuse,” another commented.

Xu Bingtao, a writer with the Weifang Evening Post stated "This is heterodoxy. The fundamental strategy to eradicating the malignant tumor of corruption is by publishing officials’ assets so that they are scrutinized under the sunshine.”

Even the China Daily, a state-owned newspaper, pointed out in its editorial that “The simple wearing of some item doesn’t necessarily impugn an official’s honesty...Constraints on corruption shouldn’t be fragmented, nor just concerned with the correction of minutiae.”

The discipline-inspection committees, the enforcers for the Chinese Communist Party, run their own parallel judicial system. It possesses great power and its main function is to investigate officials who are corrupt or who do not comply with party policy. Officials unfortunate enough to attract attention can be detained secretly for indefinite periods without trial.

The Chinese public have welcomed crackdowns, having grown disgusted by the common greediness and outlandish eye-catching extravagance of their officials. Lately, the Director of the Work Safety Department of Shannxi Province became notorious, after being exposed in various photos from China’s netizens, for owning a dozen top brand watches.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Society

Italy's Right-Wing Government Turns Up The Heat On 'Gastronationalism'

Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of "gastronationalism."

Dough is run through a press to make pasta

Creation of home made pasta

Karl De Meyer et Olivier Tosseri

ROME — On March 23, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced that Rome would ask UNESCO to recognize Italian cuisine as a piece of intangible cultural heritage.

On March 28, Lollobrigida, who is also Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's brother-in-law, promised that Italy would ban the production, import and marketing of food made in labs, especially artificial meat — despite the fact that there is still no official request to market it in Europe.

Days later, Italian Eurodeputy Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and member of the Forza Italia party, which is part of the governing coalition in Rome, caused a sensation in the European Parliament. On the sidelines of the plenary session, Sophia Loren's niece organized a wine tasting, under the slogan "In Vino Veritas," to show her strong opposition (and that of her government) to an Irish proposal to put health warnings on alcohol bottles. At the end of the press conference, around 11am, she showed her determination by drinking from the neck of a bottle of wine, to great applause.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest