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To: Kid Rock who wrote (24273)	10/16/2002 5:26:01 AM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 74559

Hello Kid Rock, << It's a terrible, horrible, lawless frontier>> Sounds positively Darwinian. And, when events go wrong/right, the crooks are aware enough to make a run for it, unlike the Worldcom and Enron types, previously secure in their knowledge that all will still be OK;0) scmp.com Wednesday, October 16, 2002 Top mainland official flees to avoid arrest EXCLUSIVE by WANG XIANGWEI The former head of China's State Power Corporation has fled the country to avoid arrest on corruption charges, according to sources. Gao Yan, the former president and chief executive of the massive utility, is believed to be hiding in a Western country, sources told the South China Morning Post. Mr Gao is the highest-ranking government official to flee to a foreign country in more than a decade. The last senior government official who exiled himself was Xu Jiatun, Beijing's former top representative in Hong Kong. He fled to the United States just after the government's bloody crackdown on student demonstrations in 1989. It remained unclear when and how Mr Gao fled the country, they said. State Power Corporation officials were not available for comment yesterday, but spokesmen contacted last week were unable to confirm Mr Gao's whereabouts. Sources said mainland authorities were working hard to locate him and have him brought back. Unlike Mr Xu, who went into exile for political reasons, Mr Gao fled because of the government's anti-corruption drive, sources said. Both Mr Xu and Mr Gao enjoyed the rank of government ministers. The news comes as the central government is on the verge of announcing a break-up of the corporation in a radical overhaul of the country's electricity sector, sources said yesterday. The State Power Corporation is expected to be broken into seven giant companies: two to manage the nation's grids and five to manage power generation. The disappearance of Mr Gao, a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee, also comes as the mainland braces for its most important leadership changes in more than a decade. Early next month, the party will elect a new leadership, to be followed by a government shake-up in March when the National People's Congress convenes. Mr Gao, a protege of NPC chairman Li Peng, had disappeared from public view over the past few months, prompting speculation that he had been detained on corruption charges. Sources said the government's investigation into Mr Gao centred on 1995-97, when he was governor of Yunnan province. But a report in the mainland newspaper the 21st Century Business Herald hinted that share buy-backs and personnel issues were among the reasons behind the investigation. Set up on January 16, 1997, the State Power Corporation is China's biggest energy firm. It had assets of 1.8 trillion yuan (HK$1.7 trillion) at the end of 2000, accounting for 72 per cent of the country's power assets. Last year it was ranked 77th in the Fortune list of the world's 500 biggest firms and had sales of 400.3 billion yuan. Mr Gao had a distinguished career in the power industry and the party, starting as deputy director of the Electricity Industry Bureau of Jilin province in 1975, becoming its director and party chief in 1985 and deputy governor and deputy party chief of Jilin in 1988. From March 1992 he was governor of Jilin, then party chief of Yunnan province from June 1995 until his appointment as chief of State Power in August 1997. Mainland media have reported that Mr Gao submitted his resignation on August 2 last year which State Power accepted.