Xinhua reported on September 15 that 11 reporters had been found guilty of being involved in the botched cover-up of an underground explosion that occurred on June 22, 2002, in the Yixingzhai gold mine of Fanzhi County, Shanxi Province. The explosion killed 38 miners.

On September 26, the agency further reported that among the 11 exposed, four were Xinhua reporters based in Shanxi.

After the accident, instead of launching immediate rescue efforts, the county government burned the corpses of the victims and concealed the truth by reporting that among 40 miners at the site, only two were dead and four injured, while the rest were safe and sound.

To silence the Xinhua reporting team sent there especially to expose the suspected cover-up, the county Party secretary asked the deputy head of the county's propaganda department to negotiate a settlement.

Two Xinhua reporters were each offered 20,000 yuan, and all four reporters received a 28-gram gold item valued at 2,400 yuan.

The punishments for the four reporters range from expulsion from the Party and their public positions to a serious warning within the Party.

That reporters receive bribes certainly made no news, but it is remarkable that a Party secretary should take so much interest in an accident in a privately owned mine.

His handling of the incident also betrays a philosophy that is increasingly infiltrating all spheres of social life - that economic levers are the only forces that are reliable and efficient.

A former classmate of mine now serves as a deputy township head in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and is currently conducting inspections in coastal Fujian Province. He said that the economic disparity between the East and West has given rise to different conceptualizations of administrative merit.

While in Fujian, talent of an official is measured by the amount of tax revenue raised from the province, in the poverty-stricken West, in contrast, the competence of officials is gauged by their ability to raise funds for the local area.

He told me that once an official from Beijing responsible for fund allocation paid a visit to an area in Xinjiang. During the banquet held in his honour a key local official failed to turn up. This imprudence cost the area the funds earlier promised.

Local officials had to send a task force to Beijing where they stayed for several weeks before the official was restored to a reasonable humour. This kind of strange govermental PR has by no means been restricted to underdeveloped areas in dire need of money.

I have heard that even in some developed areas some cadres' sole business is to entertain visiting superiors. During the off season, when visits are few, they enter a sort of hibernation and are rarely heard of. But when the occasion calls, no one could but marvel at their decibel, their overwhelming congeniality, their thirst for approval, their capacity for work, and their efficiency.

Deng Xiaoping once said that whether a cat is black or white, the cat that catches the mouse is a good cat. This utilitarian attitude had its value in its time, but I think it high time to take stock.

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