With mooncake bribes outlawed, it’s time to relax
Print Edition
TIGHTENED supervision of holiday gift-giving has cleared the way for a more relaxed holiday as officials re-focus on family.
The Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls tomorrow, is a traditional holiday when families reunite under the full moon and eat mooncakes. The festival, like many others, is also an excuse for subtle bribery.
“It is the most relaxed Mid-Autumn Festival in my five-year career, I’m going home early for a family reunion,” said Zhang Lei, a 30-year-old civil servant in Hefei, east China’s Anhui Province.
Last year, the country’s disciplinary departments were urged to tighten supervision and enforcement of rules 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, have been banned.
It is the first time Zhang and his colleagues have no reception, no official banquet and no pressures for holiday-gift giving during the three-day break.
“Some of the younger staff at the office made mooncakes and gave them to 70 elderly people in the community,” Zhang said.
The holiday is celebrated by sharing mooncakes — small, dense pies that contain a variety of fillings. In the past, ornate mooncakes costing upward of 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) were exchanged as lavish gifts to curry favor or impress superiors.
Wang Wenxin, a high school teacher in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province, said the practice is not limited to public officials.
“Even though we’re not in the government, our campus is still influenced by the gift-giving sentiment,” he said.
The climate surrounding the holiday has detached the festival’s meaning from its roots, making it more about exchanging high-priced gifts than about spending time with family, he said.
“In the past I would feel uneasy at family banquets if I hadn’t bought gifts for my leaders,” he said.
With less emphasis on expensive gifts there is no longer such pressure, he said.
During a crackdown last month on breaches of conduct, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China uncovered many officials using public funds to buy mooncakes as gifts.
The watchdog even opened a special section on its website for people to report cases of public funds being misused.
In 2012, the Party leadership introduced eight rules designed to outlaw extravagance and excessive spending by its members.
By the end of June, more than 61,700 officials had been disciplined for breaking the rules, according to the disciplinary watchdog.
“The working style of Party members and officials has a big influence on the social climate,” said Wang Kaiyu, a sociologist at the Anhui Academy of Social Sciences.
“The anti-graft campaign reminds people to cherish and celebrate the traditional festival as a family reunion,” he said.
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