Yeah, this was pretty much the norm. But these past 4 years, this kind of "using public money for private events" are much less common. There is much much tight curb on "dinners" "using government owned cars" "red pockets gifts". And there is a lot of auditing, approvals, and documentation for doing anything. Source: my cousin works in a governmental department. His co-worker was fired for hosting a expensive dinner for potential collaboration partner. Before, people wanted to get a government position for the "nice Perks". Nowadays, government position is no longer that "you can do whatever you want job". There are actually tons of rules for government jobs. Ex: My brother is not allowed to purchase a drink more than 8% alcohol content if the meal is sponsored by government money and there is amount cap per meal. He is mid ranked. And people can report evidence of corruption rules breaking so he is very careful with the rules.
Yep the introduction written by Jordan Schneider was really confusing and seemed to want to portray the crackdown by Xi solely as something to weed out dissidents. That might have been some part of it especially in high-profile cases, but in general the drive to crack down corruption and make the officialdom more service-minded is definitely genuine, and people have been taking positive note of this. A lot of previous officials have simply resigned and gone into the private sector in order to make more money as a result as well.
