Hong Kong refuses to send quake aid

Hong Kong lawmakers fiercely opposed a plan Wednesday to donate money to a Chinese provincial government for earthquake victims, underlining widespread public concerns about corruption on the mainland.

The city’s leader, Leung Chun-ying, proposed donating 100 million Hong Kong dollars ($13 million) to the provincial government of Sichuan for relief efforts following a 7.0-magnitude quake Saturday that struck Lushan County, killing at least 192 people and injuring over 11,000.

Lawmakers said they wanted to help the victims but opposed giving money to government officials because of fears about corruption and misuse of funds.

They said they would prefer that the funds be channeled to aid groups and NGOs.

The debate reflects wider public wariness in semiautonomous Hong Kong about official corruption in mainland China, an enduring problem that President Xi Jinping has promised to root out. It marks a sharp change in sentiment compared with reactions to previous disasters that prompted residents to open their wallets, such as a devastating temblor that also struck the Sichuan region in 2008, killing 90,000 people.

Following that quake, “the government donated HK$9 billion ($1.2 billion) in return for scandals and also a lot of substandard projects,” lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki said.

Hong Kong residents were especially miffed after learning last year that a Sichuan secondary school built in 2010 with HK$2 million in quake relief funds was later torn down to make way for a luxury housing development.

Numerous other legislators also voiced their opposition to the donation at a special meeting of the finance committee, which ended before they could vote on it.

“What China lacks is not money but rather clean government,” said lawmaker Claudia Mo. “Our trust in those provincial governments has gone bankrupt.”

Hong Kong Web users have flooded online forums to express their disgust at the donation proposal. Some posted cartoons mocking Leung, who is backed by Beijing and is widely unpopular, and circulated a satirical photo montage joking that donations would be spent on prostitutes, shopping trips and expensive cars and houses for Communist Party bureaucrats.

The skepticism is not limited to Hong Kong, a special administrative region with its own legal system and currency.

It’s also reflected in a photo that has gone viral among Chinese Internet users that shows Premier Li Keqiang touring the disaster area with a local official sporting a watch-shaped tan line on his wrist. The official, Lushan County Communist Party chief Fan Jiyue, may have been trying to avoid the scrutiny suffered by other officials in the past year after they were spotted wearing pricey wristwatches.

Internet users posted photos of Fan at other events apparently wearing a Swiss-made Vacheron Constantin worth 210,000 yuan ($34,000).

In another sign of the struggle to win over public trust, China’s Red Cross will reopen an investigation into a 2011 incident involving a young staffer shown in photos carrying expensive handbags and posing in front of a Maserati, the Beijing News reported .

The relief body is taking part in postquake efforts but has been struggling to raise funds because of the lingering effects of the 2011 scandal that scuttled its credibility.