"I've always insisted on leaving my legacy behind no matter where." Guo announced. No wonder when the central government tries to stop economic overheating, the local ones de facto resist.
Smearing birthday cake on the cheeks of an American factory owner, singing Karaoke with Taiwanese investors, knocking spirit with real estate developers: Guo would do anything to attract investment to Gushi, a county of 1.6m people and 32 towns in Henan province, where he served as secretary.
In one of Guo’s reflective moments, he said that he supported a new policy by the standing committee of both the municipal and the provincial party committees in China, which was to handpick party officials with law degrees to join their league. He believed this to be a positive change because China should follow the rule of law, rather than the rule of people. However, in another case, he visited the Bureau of Petitioning in Gushi County and approved visitors’ requests without consulting the proper procedures used by the bureau.
At one of the meetings, Guo urged the civil servants in Gushi County to help cut government spending by drinking less. Meanwhile, every time he was at a meal, we witness him emptying glasses after glasses of alcohol. As Zhou points out at the beginning of the documentary, Chinese civil servants have two major responsibilities, and the first of them is attracting investors. To do so, they often need to drink excessively at meals as deals are broached and sealed in drinking parties. According to the government report, Gushi County’s income amounted to 280 million yuan in 2008, but its spending surpassed 12 billion yuan in the same year.
A fascinating look at how the world's second economy operates in county-level.
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