The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has “secret bases” around the country that provide food supplies exclusively for high-level officials in the central government, according to a report by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily on May 1.
According to Apple Daily, special food supplies for the top leadership are gathered from farms maintained by the military, armed police, and farm authorities spread out among 13 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. Local city and county officials have also set up their own “tegong,” which means special supply, to provide themselves with safe foods.
Back in 2008, Radio Free Asia reported that the CCP’s State Council, a top administrative organ, established a “Special Food Supply Center for The Central State Organs” in April 2005 in order to coordinate high-quality organically-grown, non-GMO (genetically modified organism) food supplies for 94 senior officials.
Meanwhile, ordinary Chinese people can only purchase food produced with poor food safety standards, such as meat and fish pumped with steroids and hormones to speed up growth; milk tainted with toxic additives like melamine; soil and water sources contaminated by heavy metals.
As air pollution has become more serious in China, government officials have a special supply for air, too. In November 2011, Chinese conglomerate China Grand Enterprises said that the firm installed air purifiers in Zhongnanhai, the Party leadership headquarters in Beijing, to clean the air for them, according to Apple Daily.
In July 2013, a farm owner in Beijing told China News, a news magazine published by the state-run China News Service, that some organic farms in the Beijing area grow food especially for the special supply that goes to making food in the central government’s cafeteria.
The CCP has a long history of providing special treatment to its own members, often at the expense of ordinary citizens. In the 1950s, Soviet advisors helped the CCP set up a food supply department for the Party leaders, according to the biography, “The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician,” by Li Zhisui. Mao ruled China from 1949 until his death in 1976.
Mao’s failed agricultural policies resulted in the Great Famine in China between 1959 and 1961, when more than 30 million people are estimated to have starved to death. During that time, Mao developed the “tegong” system to provide what limited food sources the country possessed for officials only.
In May 1960, a department store in Beijing set up a “department of special supply” to offer high-level officials and their families rare delicacies, wines, and cigarettes imported from other countries.
Written by Sunny Chao
Luo Tingting of New Tang Dynasty Television contributed to this report.
From: The Epoch Times
