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Chinese New Year - Nothing is Safe from Corruption

An analysis found 188 million tickets available, meaning that all but 12 million of the estimated 200 million travelers should have been able to get tickets.

It is impossible to know what happened to these 12 million unemployed and/or ticketless individuals.

Corruption derails travel plans for many Chinese
The Los Angeles Times
26 January 2009
by Barbara Demick

Even the railroad ticket business in China is corrupt. During the New Year people often spend two or three days at the station trying to buy tickets. The quest becomes a national obsession.

"When the ticket window opened at 9 a.m., I was the fourth person in line. But there were no tickets with seats. Even the first person didn't get tickets," said one man who had been in line since the evening before. "Nobody gets tickets by standing in line," said another. He tried four times in the last seven years to buy a ticket for the holidays and had never gotten one through legal channels.

When the owner of a travel agency asked why the best seats disappeared no matter how early you tried to buy them, he was told to keep his mouth shut. He persisted and had his legs smashed by thugs.

A railroad employee who threatened to report Liu Zhixiang, director of one of Wuhan's two train stations and the brother of a powerful CCP official, was stabbed in the hand. A businessman, Gao Tiezhu, filed a lawsuit against Liu for expropriation. Thugs broke into his apartment and stabbed him in the legs in front of his family. They severed an artery and he bled to death. Gao is quoted as writing in his will, "If I'm murdered, it will have been done by that corrupt official, Liu Zhixiang."

The China Daily, usually a government mouthpiece, said recently, "Why we can't buy a railroad ticket through the ticket counter still remains something of a mystery."

In plain view of police, scalpers whisper "tickets, tickets" to those on line. One man declared "This is the problem with corruption in this country. It's like grass. You keep cutting it and it just grows back."

Read the full article at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-china-train-tickets26-2009jan26,0,6323685.story

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