Cost of "second wives" leads to corruption in China

Scotsman:

INVESTIGATORS in China have found that 90 per cent of the top officials brought down in corruption cases in recent years had kept mistresses, drawing a link between sex and misconduct.

Mistresses and "second wives" are common among government officials and businessmen in China and are often blamed for driving officials to seek money through bribes or other abuses of power.

A report by China's top prosecutor's office said that of 16 provincial-level officials punished for "serious" corruption in the last five years, most were involved in "trading power for sex", along with gambling, money-laundering and shady land sales to developers, the Beijing News said.

"Nearly 90 per cent kept mistresses, some keeping several," the paper said.

Among them was Chen Liangyu, the former Shanghai Communist Party chief.

Chen was accused in a high-profile scandal in Shanghai, in which £200 million in pension funds was improperly invested in real estate and road-toll projects. He was also branded "morally decadent" and a philanderer.

Also named was Beijing's former deputy mayor, Liu Zhihua, fired for taking bribes and helping his mistress "seek profit" while in charge of Olympic venue construction.

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As Sen. Vitter learned in the US it is not always cheaper career wise to rent, either. The high cost of extra sex appears to know no national boundaries. The story gives other examples of how corruption mixed with mistresses. The guy who recently got the death penalty for taking bribes to permit defective drugs and products to be sold was not mentioned.

I suspect some of this comes from the cultural depravity of having come of age in a communist state.