A LOT of high-ranking government officials must have been choking on their early morning cup of tea last week as they settled down to read the latest issue of Party and Government Forum.
Prominently displayed among the usual turgid texts on administrative reform was an article by Du Jian and Yong Biao guaranteed to give any cadre with a tendency to accept large sums of cash in return for favours the fright of his life.
In addressing the problem of corruption, the authors had taken the well-known saying ''kill the chicken to scare the monkey'' and reversed it.
Killing the chicken (low-ranking officials) to scare the monkey (high-ranking officials) has been the main modus operandi of the current campaign against corruption.
Thousands of minor officials have been fined and dismissed from their jobs and in severe cases sentenced to long prison terms or even executed.
But despite the large number of chickens being killed, the authors noted, a lot of monkeys had failed to take the hint.
The authors, whose names mean ''put a stop to something'' and ''brave tiger'', said time had now come to start killing a few monkeys rather than just a lot of chickens.