Two Chinese bureaucrats have failed to return from official trips to Paris and authorities are investigating their claims of health problems and other reasons, state media reports and officials said yesterday.
Government officials are required to immediately go back to China after overseas trips and it was unclear if the two had overstayed their visas. Their failure to return raised speculation they might be trying to avoid trouble at home, the reports said.
Yang Xianghong (楊湘洪), a 52-year-old district Communist Party chief in the southeastern coastal city of Wenzhou, left the group he was traveling with to visit his daughter, who lives in France, the state-run magazine Oriental Outlook said. Later he said he would stay on because of illness, it said.
An official in Yang’s Lucheng district in Wenzhou yesterday said that a mission was sent to France to urge Yang to return home immediately. Like many media-shy officials, the Wenzhou official refused to give his name.
An official in Shanghai’s Luwan district, who only gave his surname, Li, confirmed that the district’s deputy governor, Xin Weiming (忻偉明), had likewise failed to return from a trip to Paris earlier this month.
“There is an investigation under way,” Li said. “We have been trying to get in touch with Xin, but have been unable to reach him. He hasn’t returned to China.”
Both Yang and Xin told fellow members of their delegations that they were unwell and were staying in France for medical treatment, said the reports, which did not detail the official trips’ missions.
Last year, more than 800 officials facing corruption charges fled overseas. Of that number, 500 remain at large, the newspaper China Daily reported.
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