China Newsweek magazine reported recently that several corrupt and disgraced officials don't know how to pay their bills with bank cards.

The report cited their attorneys, who said their clients never had the chance to pay out of their own pockets unless when they were bribing superiors for favors and patronage.

While it may cause chuckles to hear that some of our officials, capable of transferring massive illicit wealth and their family overseas undetected, cannot even use bank cards, it's true that some are less articulate and astute than they appear in public.

Whenever they have to prepare speeches for meetings, they can comfortably leave the task to ghost writers; whenever their computers break down, they can order someone to fix it; whenever they have to reply to posts on microblog - if they have one - there are people at their beck and call working to show their boss is web savvy.

Since they have others to take care of basic tasks, it's not that surprising that some officials cannot manage trivial things such as swiping their bank cards.

Yangcheng Evening News editorialized on April 24 that some cadres know nothing beyond bureaucratic matters. When they take bribes they stash wads of cash under beds. In their view even banks aren't reliable, only cash is.

So when cadres are holding forth on developments in the financial sector and advanced technology like cloud-computing, it's sometimes hard to match their confidence and swagger on the podium with the embarrassing moment when they need help using a bank card.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)