China’s Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates the year’s brightest full moon. It is a time in which families come together to embrace their unity, often sharing China’s sweet and popular pastry: the mooncake.
Mooncakes, however, have become more than just a symbol of reunions. The pastry has been used as bribery, often by officials, employers, and teachers using public funds to purchase lavish boxed sets of mooncakes.
The cakes can be gilded or filled with rare ingredients, or even made of solid gold, making them worth thousands of dollars, reports the New York Times. Often, additional bribes are included in the packages.
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) is treating this form of gift giving as a serious offense, issuing an official notice banning anyone from using public money to buy the cakes. The Times states that the Ministry of Education has reminded teachers and all its departments of the ban.
This has been a particularly difficult year for the mooncake industry, with the CCDI listing mooncake gift giving as a reportable crime. As a result of the crackdown, sales of many high-end products, such as the extravagant boxed sets of mooncakes, have fallen. The pastry’s sales have fallen by half since 2013, reports Reuters.
The secretary of the CCDI, Wang Qishan, said that though mooncakes may be a small thing, they are part of a corruption problem that has been around for a long time in China, which is why the anti-corruption campaign is expected to last five years.
