China bans officials sending new year cards at public expense

China bans officials sending new year cards at public expense

7:44am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s ruling Communist Party on Friday banned officials from sending or printing new year cards or calendars if they have been paid for with public funds, the latest step in the government’s crackdown on waste, extravagance and graft. “The printing and production are more and more extravagant, and the waste is greater and greater,” the central government said on its main website (www.gov.cn).“This is not only an expression of formalism, but drives extravagance.”

The order covers all government and party departments, state-owned industries and financial bodies, though an exception will be made for those which deal with foreigners and overseas Chinese, as long as they rein in costs, the notice said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to address growing public anger at the illegal or unethical behavior of party officials, especially those with flamboyant lifestyles, often seen as a sign they are corrupt.

Since taking office in March, Xi has called corruption a threat to the party’s survival and vowed to go after powerful “tigers” as well as lowly “flies”.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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