Graft watchdog calls for public tipoffs on holiday spending

The top disciplinary body of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has started publishing a special column on its website to encourage public tip-offs regarding lavish spending by officials during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival.

The CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) is calling on the public to report incidents of officials spending lavishly during the traditional holiday. The CCDI did the same thing during the May Day holiday.

Misconduct could include using public funds to buy mooncakes or gift cards, a statement on the CCDI website said on Sunday.

Violators will be named and shamed in a weekly report on the website, the statement said.

Celebratory gifts and feasts, usually involving sweet or savory pastries known as mooncakes, are a custom during Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on September 8 this year.

The moves aim to better implement the "eight-point rules," introduced by the CPC leadership at the end of 2012, which were an effort to reject extravagance and excessive formalities and help prevent harmful work styles, the statement said.

Mooncake producers like the time-honored Quanjude Group and Daoxiangcun Foodstuff Co. Ltd, have shifted their focus onto middle- and low-end mooncakes, the Beijing-based Securities Daily reported Friday.

The minimum price of mooncake gift boxes has decreased from 200 yuan ($32.5) last year to 100 yuan due to shrinking bulk purchases by the government, said Zhang Zhan, the deputy general manager with Quanjude-Fangshan Food.

The maximum price of all the 32 types of moon cake gift boxes is below 300 yuan, and most are below 200 yuan, according to a report Daoxiangcun gave to the Global Times.

Around 10 years ago mooncakes began to be used as a cover for bribes as corruption intensified, said Wang Laihua, director of the Public Opinion Research Center at Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences and a mooncake mold collector.