China bans officials from buying mooncakes with public funds

September 4, 2013 Leave a comment

China bans officials from buying mooncakes with public funds

8:30am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – China is banning officials from using public funds to buy mooncakes, pastries offered as gifts during the Mid-Autumn Festival, as part of President Xi Jinping’s fight against corruption, the government said on Tuesday. Officials cannot use public money to send mooncakes as gifts or to arrange banquets that are not related to official duties during the festival, which falls on September 19 this year, the ruling Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on its website.“The Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day are approaching, we must resolutely put an end to using public funds,” the commission quoted Xi as saying, in reference to gifts, eating and drinking, tours and extravagant waste.

Mooncakes are filled with ingredients such as lotus seed paste and salted duck egg yolk, and symbolize the moon. The festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is marked by family reunions.

The separate National Day holiday lasts a week from October 1-7.

Anyone flouting the bans will be severely dealt with, the party discipline watchdog said.

Xi has made cutting back on extravagance and waste a main theme of his administration, seeking to assuage anger over corruption and restore faith in the party.

Last month, the government said it would ban officials from holding extravagant galas linked to official meetings that have hurt the government’s image.

Xi has told officials to end elaborate and long-winded welcoming ceremonies for him and other top leaders and banished alcohol from military functions as he tries to project a man-of-the-people image.

The party, fearful of anything that could weaken its grip on power, has struggled to contain public anger over a string of corruption scandals.

Xi has warned that the party’s survival is at risk and the country could face unrest if graft is not tackled.

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment