Chinese fire high ranking Olympics official

Oh those crazy Chinese. Liu Zhihua was fired because of corruption and leading a decadent life:

A terse report Monday by the state-run Xinhua News Agency said Beijing Vice Mayor Liu Zhihua’s “wrongdoings” were “quite serious” and merited his removal Sunday.

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In its brief statement, Xinhua didn’t directly link Liu’s sudden dismissal with his work coordinating the construction of the 31 venues in the Beijing area. It said only that Liu, a 57-year-old Communist Party official from Liaoning province in the northeast, was sacked for “corruption and degeneracy.”

A Hong Kong daily newspaper with close ties to Beijing’s rulers, Wen Wei Po, said Liu maintained several mistresses and built a personal entertainment center, replete with closed-circuit television cameras, in the outlying Beijing district of Huairou. It said Liu took “large sums” in bribes from foreign businessmen, and later denied them land that he had promised. The foreigners then complained to the Communist Party’s Central Disciplinary Committee, the party’s highest organ for investigating corruption, the paper said.

Liu had been seen in public as recently as May 29, when he went to the site in the Beijing district of Fengtai where laborers are erecting a softball stadium.

He was in charge of city planning, construction, transportation and all sports activities.

In a sign of the case’s sensitivity, censors purged any commentary about Liu’s firing from Internet chat rooms.