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| Airport tantrum becomes latest symbol of arrogance and entitlement in China | Airport tantrum becomes latest symbol of arrogance and entitlement in China |
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| Anyone could understand Yan Linkun's frustration when he was informed that he had missed his flight. But the way Yan reacted to the news – banging on doors and smashing computers – has turned him into the latest symbol of the entitlement and arrogance increasingly associated with China's political elite. | Anyone could understand Yan Linkun's frustration when he was informed that he had missed his flight. But the way Yan reacted to the news – banging on doors and smashing computers – has turned him into the latest symbol of the entitlement and arrogance increasingly associated with China's political elite. |
| A surveillance video showing the mining company deputy chairman's violent tantrum at Kunming Changshui airport, Yunnan province, went viral on Chinese microblogs after it was uploaded to the internet this weekend. | |
| The four-minute video, captured last Tuesday morning, shows Yan standing by a check-in counter as an airport employee informs him that he has missed his flight to Shenzhen. | The four-minute video, captured last Tuesday morning, shows Yan standing by a check-in counter as an airport employee informs him that he has missed his flight to Shenzhen. |
| Yan – who is also a member of a political advisory body in Qujing, Yunnan – responds first with incredulity, then rage. He destroys two computers and a telephone before dismantling a free-standing poster and using its metal frame to banged on the flight gate door. A crowd gathers, but nobody attempts to restrain him. The mining company has suspended Yan, and the political advisory body has threatened punishment. | Yan – who is also a member of a political advisory body in Qujing, Yunnan – responds first with incredulity, then rage. He destroys two computers and a telephone before dismantling a free-standing poster and using its metal frame to banged on the flight gate door. A crowd gathers, but nobody attempts to restrain him. The mining company has suspended Yan, and the political advisory body has threatened punishment. |
| Since the incoming Chinese president, Xi Jinping, launched a crackdown on corruption last autumn, dozens of officials have been exposed as crooked by the country's internet users and subsequently reprimanded. The crackdown has done more to expose the scale of China's corruption problem than validate the high-level efforts to tackle it. | Since the incoming Chinese president, Xi Jinping, launched a crackdown on corruption last autumn, dozens of officials have been exposed as crooked by the country's internet users and subsequently reprimanded. The crackdown has done more to expose the scale of China's corruption problem than validate the high-level efforts to tackle it. |
| Yan has expressed remorse for his behaviour. "My irrational actions and rudeness have caused some losses to the airport as well as bad effects to the public, so I sincerely apologise to the airport and public," he told the airport's deputy manager, according to the Shanghai Daily. | Yan has expressed remorse for his behaviour. "My irrational actions and rudeness have caused some losses to the airport as well as bad effects to the public, so I sincerely apologise to the airport and public," he told the airport's deputy manager, according to the Shanghai Daily. |
| The tantrum is not the only incidence of high-level misbehaviour that has gripped China during the past week. The Communist party secretary of a district bureau in Nanyang City, Henan province, drove a government car into a cinema on Sunday morning, injuring 26 people, according the state news agency Xinhua. Eight of the injured were hospitalised, two of whom remain in a critical condition. | The tantrum is not the only incidence of high-level misbehaviour that has gripped China during the past week. The Communist party secretary of a district bureau in Nanyang City, Henan province, drove a government car into a cinema on Sunday morning, injuring 26 people, according the state news agency Xinhua. Eight of the injured were hospitalised, two of whom remain in a critical condition. |
| The official, Liu Xianchong mistook the accelerator in his government-issued vehicle for the brake, reported Xinhua. The report cited local police as saying that Lie had been off work for seven months because of a cerebral infarction, a type of stroke. A special group to "handle the incident and its aftermath" was set up by the local party committee, Xinhua said. Liu has been detained. | |
| Last week party disciplinary authorities said a former official in Shaanxi province had been expelled from the party for "serious wrongdoing" and "suspected crimes". Yang Dacai rose to notoriety last August after he was photographed smiling at the scene of a road accident in which 36 people died. He became a symbol of official corruption when further photographs appeared on the internet of him wearing a number of luxury watches that many in China believe he could not possibly afford on a public servant's salary. |