China's State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) has disqualified an American university from arranging government-paid training courses.
The SAFEA said in a statement on its website that the Northwestern Polytechnic University, based in Fremont, California, provided an "unfaithful schedule" on an application to arrange a visit by officials from Wenzhou City of east China's Zhejiang Province.
The application said officials would take part in a five-day training course in February to "learn about government administration and assistance to local companies".
The SAFEA said the training lasted only three days and instead of visiting three cities, officials toured eight cities, including Las Vegas.
The SAFEA has ordered its local branch to conduct further investigation into the affair.
The SAFEA, in charge of approving applications for local government official's overseas visits, has also ordered all groups committed to trips scheduled with the Northwestern Polytechnic University to change their foreign partner.
According to the statement, all government-funded trips are banned from going to Las Vegas, the famous gambling city in Nevada.
Earlier, a netizen had said he/she found a lost bag in a Shanghai subway stop, which contained documents regarding several government-funded visits to foreign countries, including the trip of Wenzhou officials.
The person posted photocopies, names, passport numbers, rankings of the officials, time schedules of their visits and expenditures on the Internet.
According to the postings, the 21-day trip taken by 23 Wenzhou officials cost about 650,000 yuan (95,588 U.S. dollars).
Chinese netizens expressed outrage over the sightseeing tours paid for with taxpayer money. Some sent copies of the documents to the Party's disciplinary organs.
Source:Xinhua
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