At one of Beijing’s famous tea stores, shop assistants easily sold beautifully wrapped packages of tea priced at $6,160 each before the Chinese Lunar New Year, or the Spring Festival, which fell on February 14.
The Procuratorial Daily, official newspaper of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, recently reported that among the 30 bribery cases investigated by a district procuratorate in Jinan of east China’s Shandong Province, bribes during the new year period totalled $127,000.
Nearly half of the officials who took bribes during the Lunar New Year believed the "gifts" should not be considered bribes, according to the Procuratorial Daily report.
China Daily reports that Li Chengyan, a professor at Peking University, said the public should be allowed to participate in the appraisal of an official’s performance. He believed information of an official’s possessions should be made public and people should be encouraged to supervise and report irregularities in officials’ private lives.