Second Wives Expose Chinese Corruption

“At least 80 percent of corrupt officials exposed in Dongguan had mistresses who gave us important information that we did not possess,” the deputy director of the city’s anti-corruption bureau Zhou Yuefeng told the China Daily newspaper.

China’s public servants regulations, which took effect a year ago, say that officials will face dismissal if they are found to have mistresses, known more popularly in China as “second wives.”

China’s Communist Party has acknowledged that the country’s rampant corruption affects the country’s stability. Last month, the government unveiled a new five-year plan to counteract graft. In the most recent high-profile arrests, 43 officials involved in the misuse of Sichuan earthquake relief supplies were punished – 12 were sacked. No word on whether it was the testimony of “second wives” that led to their downfalls.

Last year, a senior official was denounced by his 11 mistresses after some of their husbands were sentenced to death for graft. Pang Jiayu, 63, a former deputy of the Shaanxi province’s political advisory body, had assigned either the women or their husbands enormous government or financial projects. In one water-diversion project that had involved Pang’s wife and several mistresses, water pipes exploded just six months after completion.

The Pang case came to light the same week that a senior provincial Communist Party official was executed for blowing up his mistress with a car bomb, after growing tired of her constant demands for money.