BEIJING — If you want a full-time teaching job, but you're stuck in a temporary gig without health benefits, Luo Chunlei advises that you buy the school principal a box of mooncakes and follow up with an envelope of dough.
Having an operation? Better slip the surgeon some cash. And don't forget the anesthesiologist.
"I'm absolutely disgusted by it, but this is how our system works," said Luo, a 32-year-old math teacher turned activist who is campaigning against what he sees as Chinese society's pervasive culture of corruption.
Gift-giving has long been a staple of Chinese life, but the means and expectations are increasingly colliding with more modern anti-graft strictures.
This year, the government has turned party pooper, railing against excessive gift-giving.
"Gift-giving is a must, but you should avoid extravagance," advised an editorial in People's Daily, which warned against gifts of luxury brands, wine, expensive cigarettes, large amounts of cash, and sex.
The new standards on gift-giving are part of an austerity campaign launched by Xi Jinping since he stepped up to the presidency in March. The crackdown began in earnest last month with the start of the holiday season.
Wang Qishan, the vice premier who has been named anti-corruption czar under the new government, warned that "decadent styles have polluted our festival culture in recent years with the sending of increasingly extravagant gifts … drifting further away from our frugal virtues."
"China has always been a society of guanxi," or connections, said Hu Xingdou, an economist at the Beijing Institute of Technology. "Treating people to meals, giving people gifts, is all part of the Chinese lifestyle. This is something that goes way back and definitely clashes with the rule of law."
The crackdown has forced Chinese to confront tough questions about how much is too much.
For the Mid-Autumn Festival, business associates generally trade hockey-puck-shaped mooncakes that sometimes cost $200 per box.
Luxury Panda brand cigarettes wrapped for holidays are designed less for smoking than gifting to impress, with prices up to $50 a pack. In southern China, cash is slipped into fetching red envelopes known as hongbao. Gift certificates are another popular option because they can be readily traded for cash.
Parents are also expected to ante up a gift on Teachers' Day, a public holiday on Sept. 10, to help ensure that their children get good grades.
Such gifts are chicken feed compared with Montblanc pens and $10,000 Rolex watches.
Or a $3-million villa on the French Riviera, the key piece of evidence in the bribery trial of former Chongqing Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai, who was recently sentenced to life in prison.
Last month, the Chinese government banned the use of public funds to buy mooncakes for the harvest festival. According to the People's Daily, government officials had been buying expensive mooncakes with public funds to give to superiors in charge of promotions and audits.
The gift-giving tradition is an offshoot of the intensity of competition in China, where a large population fights for education, healthcare and jobs.
Activist Luo, who comes from a small northeastern city in Jilin province, said that his family paid 100,000 yuan — about $16,000 — in cash under the table at a public hospital two years ago when his grandfather was having surgery for colon cancer, although the medical care was nominally covered by his insurance.
Parents in his hometown have to pay at least $3,200 if they want to transfer their child to a better school, he added.
"Of course, there is no receipt for any of this. It's just cash under the table," Luo said.
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