I’m a celebrity… Get me out of Chinese government promotions

December 27, 2013 Leave a comment

I’m a celebrity… Get me out of Chinese government promotions

5:40am EST

BEIJING (Reuters) – China warned its local governments on Thursday against holding lavish dinners, fireworks displays and hiring celebrities to attract investment. Six new Commerce Ministry guidelines on investment promotion, part of a broader government campaign against extravagance and waste, also ban reserving luxury hotels, giving expensive gifts and hosting artistic performances.

Local governments often hold lavish banquets with stage performances to attract investment to their region and boost economic growth. Returning strong growth figures is traditionally a main criterion for officials’ promotions.

“Do not plan activities that have no essential content related to the theme of the investment promotion,” the ministry said in a statement on its website.

“Don’t simply make the size of the investment attracted a basis for assessing official achievements or for reward and punishment.”

Since taking over the reins of the Communist Party in November 2012 and the government in March, President Xi Jinping has vowed to crack down on corruption, which he has said threatens the party’s survival.

A year ago, the government launched a campaign against extravagance and waste aimed at curtailing gift giving and lavish banquets. The sale of luxury food gift boxes has plummeted this year.

Several other measures have followed, including a crackdown on the abuse of government car privileges by civil servants and the banning new year cards sent at public expense.

The ministry also warned officials to limit non-essential overseas trips.

Filed under Macro Trends

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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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