Suspicion vs sympathy

It should not have been like this.

The six employees of China's Benxi Iron and Steel firm on board the Air France flight AF447 that crashed into the ocean are dead. And now, many people have begun speculating if the officials had gone overseas on a "business trip or a leisure trip".

After China's prolific Internet users flooded online forums with posts expressing doubts about the nature of the trip, with a detailed roster of the six employees posted online, Benxi Iron and Steel clarified that their employees, now deceased, were on a business trip that went through appropriate and legal procedures, "not a public-funded vacation".