First baijiu, then red carpets, and now mooncakes. For Chinese government officials, the list of taboos keeps getting longer.
One month before the country celebrates its annual Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese authorities said on Wednesday that they are barring officials from buying mooncakes – a centrepiece of the holiday – as well as giving presents or hosting dinners on the public dime.
Traditionally, mooncakes are gifted (and often re-gifted) as a form of tribute during the festival, exchanged among family members as well as among companies, their clients and employees. "But this kind of polite reciprocity, when overdone, becomes a kind of squandering of cash," ran an editorial in the People’s Daily on Thursday, praising the mooncake crackdown.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal Online)