Crab industry feels the pinch in frugal times
Print Edition
Holiday season used to be boom time for gift companies in China, but the country’s frugality campaign has meant many have found it tough this time around.
In the eastern city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, locals and visitors swarm during Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday to buy Yangcheng Lake crabs — a luxury delicacy that is a popular holiday gift among government officials.
But crab sellers say customers numbers are down this year.
Zhou Xuelong, owner of a crab breeding company, said revenue is set to drop 10 percent as fewer government departments planned to buy expensive crabs. “In the past, even a government department in a small western city would place an order worth 100,000 yuan (US$16,340). But this year, old customers told me they wouldn’t be buying any crabs,” said Zhou.
In response, his company has simplified crab packaging, opened online shops, and promoted its products among ordinary citizens in China’s second or third-tier cities.
Meanwhile, restaurants in Suzhou are trying to make “crab feasts” affordable to ordinary people by offering versions that use crabs weighing 100 to 150 grams.
In the past, restaurants would offer crabs weighing 250 to 300 grams and crab feasts priced at more than 10,000 yuan.
Chinese people put a high value on social contact. Holidays are considered the proper time to nurture relationships and bond with old and new friends.
But this year, disciplinary departments were urged to tighten supervision and enforcement of discipline to reduce corruption. Practices such as the use of public funds to buy gifts, hold banquets and pay for holidays, as well as extravagance and waste, are strictly banned.
High-end wine and mooncake markets have also been hit.
Nevertheless, gift-giving persists — albeit more covertly — as shopping voucher sales have been spectacular.
A mall in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, reported 137 customers buying vouchers worth 500 or 1,000 yuan each and asking for office supply invoices.
Social scientists say the cooling of the gift market has proved the success of the government’s anti-corruption initiatives.
But only by perfecting a long-term mechanism in guarding against and punishing corrupt behavior can we have a clean government, said Wang Shiyi, director of the research center on clean politics education with the Party School of the Communist Party of China’s Jiangsu Provincial Committee.
(Xinhua)
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