Crackdown is major political task: official
China's top graft buster is stepping up the fight against holiday corruption with a website allowing the public to report mooncake-related abuses on Tuesday, as China gets ready to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on Thursday.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on September 8 unveiled a new platform on its website, encouraging the public to report excessive spending by officials during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival holiday (September 15-17) and the National Day holiday (October 1-7). Beginning Thursday, the CCDI will reveal violators' names.
Members of the public can go to the CCDI website or use its mobile applications to report officials who hold banquets or travel using public expenses, as well as those who give or receive lavish gifts during the holidays, the commission's announcement said.
Amid China's nationwide anti-corruption campaign, official gift-giving is banned, and mooncakes - often seen as a hidden form of bribery - have been targeted since 2013.
Sales of high-end mooncakes plunged thereafter, news site cnr.cn previously reported.
Unlike previous years, the disciplinary authority released warning signs very early. State- owned news organization such as the Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily published commentaries warning against the practice in July.
Huang Shuxian, vice secretary of the CCDI, on August 31 ordered the continued "cranking up of pressure" to snuff out extravagance and other undesirable work styles, especially as the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays approach, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Huang said the crackdown is a "major political task" and called for intensified supervision against undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance, urging stern penalties for transgressors.
"It is a tradition for Chinese people to hold banquets and give gifts on festivals, such as mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which has created opportunities for many officials to receive bribes," Zhang Xixian, a professor at the Party School of the CPC, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
However, Zhuang Deshui, deputy director of the Research Center for Government Integrity Building at Peking University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that anti-graft work should be institutionalized and legalized in order to avoid the pitfalls of a temporary campaign.
In 2012, a box of two mooncakes made of pure gold sold for 42,900 yuan ($6,423), raising public suspicions of corruption.
Citizens called upon the government to use the sale in its anti-corruption investigations to trace both the mooncakes' buyers and recipients, according to Xinhua.
The Global Times learned on Tuesday that typical mooncake gift boxes currently being sold in a Jingkelong supermarket in Beijing were priced between 60 yuan and 400 yuan each.
