With inflation running high and stock markets depressed, it is no wonder that Moutai, China’s most famous brand of the infamously potent baijiu liquor, has been elevated to the status of investment-grade luxury item in recent years. But according to one unexpectedly straight-talking communist party official, the sky-rocketing price of Moutai is also emblematic of another Chinese trend: rising corruption.
In surprisingly candid remarks made at a local government meeting this week, Wang Rong, Party secretary of Shenzhen, lashed out at the various forms of the abuse of public funds by officials. In particular, he described wining and dining on the government budget “the toughest and a very complicated issue” for the authorities to correct, reported the Southern Daily (in Chinese).
“If we can make do with three courses, why eight?” Mr. Wang asked local officials. He said he had been reflecting on why officials always chose the fanciest restaurants. “With my income, I can’t afford a single meal in a big restaurant,” he said, adding that officials’ behavior has “distorted” prices in such restaurants.
“Moutai is so expensive. If there were no such consumption using public funds, it wouldn’t have reached its current price,” Mr. Wang said.
The most expensive category of Moutai, which is made in the southwestern province of Guizhou, now fetches a retail price of 2,000 yuan per bottle, up from around 1,500 yuan last year, the equivalent of many blue-collar Chinese workers’ monthly salary.
Mr. Wang’s tirade comes at a time of widespread public anger over the so-called “three publics” phenomenon, a reference to government officials’ use of public funds to travel abroad, buy cars for personal use, and eat and drink.
Mr. Wang said that given years of economic reforms, the appeal of traveling overseas for officials “may not be as strong as before.” Therefore, he argued, conditions are ripening for authorities to roll out tougher measures to better regulate the use of taxpayer money.
Howevever, he conceded that it’s difficult to eliminate officials’ splurging on wining and dining completely. “While they can’t even remember what they eat, they are pretty fast at ‘innovating’ — applying different tactics today and tomorrow [to bypass oversight],” he said.
One suggestion Mr. Wang had for reining in the last and thorniest of the “three publics”: better enforcement of traffic laws. Shenzhen, he noted, is good at catching drunk drivers.
