Saying it with flowers

Press, 20 June 1984, Page 39

Saying it with flowers

NZPA-Reuter Peking A black market racket in orchids is behind a wave of crime and official corruption in China’s north-eastern steel city of Anshan, says the official “People’s Daily.” The plants are fetching up to 15,000 yuan ($11,550), each, as factories and individuals snap them up to use as a discreet alternative currency for bribing officials, the Communist Party newspaper reported in a report headed “Crazy market in orchids.”

The newspaper said one official in the Anshan prosecutor’s office was so desperate for the flowers that he staged an armed robbery to grab orchids in Chanchun city and had been sentenced to death. It said the trade bios-

somed in 1980 and peaked last year at the climax of a drive against official corruption. With a party investigation under way, it had now gone underground. The “People’s Daily” reporter, using police and tax office information, said 50 local families had got rich in the trade. Although Anshan had set up an orchid administration office, the trade still went on because penalties were too slight, taxes on orchid cultivation had been waived, and top officials were protecting orchid racketeers. Under China’s pragmatic economic policies, where many people make money but have comparatively little to spend it on, certain prized commodities are fetching high prices.