Sex, drink and mobile phones: the secret life...

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Sex, drink and mobile phones: the secret life of a Chinese official
The private diary of a Chinese Communist Party official, detailing a daily schedule of sex, drinking binges and bribe-taking, has gripped the country's imagination after it was leaked onto the internet.
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Published: 12:01AM GMT 04 Mar 2010

In 140 brief, but candid, entries, Han Feng, the sales director of a state-owned tobacco monopoly in Guangxi province, in southern China, chronicles five months of juggling his relationships with various women, attending drink-fuelled banquets and, occasionally, popping into the office.
January 15, 2008 is one typical day:
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"Tuesday (6 to 8 drizzling): Drank red wine with Dong Wen and Li Xianggui in the morning. Wu Changzhou came over at lunch to drink white wine. Drank a lot.
"Returned to Nanning after 2pm. Got my stuff and returned to Laibin.
"Ate dinner with the marketing people. Went to sing karaoke. Drank a lot more."
Mr Han's weeks appear, from the diary, to revolve around paying visits to various women in hotel rooms, resting, and purchasing the latest mobile phones and computers. On a number of days, the sole entry in his diary is: "Spent all day home, playing with [a new] mobile phone".
At other times, he appears to have accepted bribes. In one entry, he records receiving two bottles of Chinese maotai spirits and 50,000 yuan (£4,870) in cash.
"I put 30,000 yuan in the bank, and took the other 20,000 yuan home," he wrote.
As he sums up his year at the end of 2007, Mr Han appears content and happy with life. "This is the year in which my work has gone more smoothly than ever," he wrote.
"The company is growing. The mid-level cadres have worked hard to understand my goals. My authority has grown [...] As for romance, Xiao Pan is hooked, Miss Tan is now a regular, and Miss Mo is in the queue.
"This year I had abundant romantic encounters but when there are too many women, I have to pay attention to my health," he added.
How Mr Han's diary leaked online remains unclear.
However, sources told the Southern Metropolis Daily, one of China's few investigative newspapers, that Mr Han's computer had been hacked by a rival at the Tobacco bureau, who posted the excerpt online. A worker at the bureau told the newspaper: "Things are very tense and everyone is scared."
The provincial tobacco bureau said the Mr Han, who was in charge of the cities of Yulin, Wuzhou and Laibin, has now been suspended "on suspicion of infringing the law and Communist party discipline". Liu Hongxiu, the director of the bureau, said the diaries were genuine and had shown Mr Han to be corrupt. He is currently under investigation by Chinese police.
But some commentators expressed support for Mr Han, pointing out that in the scale of Chinese corruption, he was a small fish.
"What is the fuss about?" wrote one anonymous man in Nanjing. "Mr Han seems a capable and clean official, one of the cleanest we have. Only 60,000 yuan in bribes is nothing. Our former mayor was regarded as clean even though he took at least six million yuan in bribes. We should target the ones who are more senior and more corrupt."