It's disgraceful but not surprising.
Funny thing is, wifey and I have been pretty down on China lately cause of this sort of bullshit. We'll be going back to Australia permanently in a few months.
The thing is that sort of shit is expected here and not even worth noting. The only way anyone can get a government job here is to have connections and be 100% supportive of any bullshit the government does. This week both my wife and I have been involved in "altercations" with petty arseholes abusing what power they have.
Anyway, my point is: the only reason cunts get away with it here is the Chinese reluctance to get involved in any confrontation, (it's not civilised apparently). If you let them get away with it, it just gets worse. People just accept crap like that here and it continues.
(although, not all Chinese put up with the bullshit:since the Tiananmen Square massacre there have been somewhere in the vicinity of 60,000 violent anti-government protest and riots in China: of course none of this is reprted in the local media but there is some level of unrest out there).