E-gift cards flout ban on govt extravagance  

违规送礼“隐身”电子礼品卡走俏 网络交易逃避监管

(ECNS) -- Giving electronic shopping cards to officials has become a trend amid government bans on festival gifts and extravagant official spending, the Beijing Times observed on Monday.

Although luxurious banquets and gift-giving have been curbed in the national campaign, e-gift shopping cards have become a popular way to avoid official attention.

Typing the key words "gift pamphlet" into a search engine has yielded a total of 1.9 million results, most of which were gift websites.

On one of these websites, a reporter found E-gift cards for different prices. Each kind had a corresponding gift list, one of which contained items like SLR cameras, luxurious alcohol and cigarettes.

"Present givers normally buy an E-gift card on our website and leave the receivers' address. Then the website will arrange to send a package featuring a card account number, pass words and a gift list to the address," said a salesperson surnamed Chen.

By sending such cards, the senders and receivers don't even have to meet each other.

"Corporate customers account for a large of part of our clients, and they buy gift cards for government agencies," said a seller at one website, who added that the value such orders can reach over hundreds of thousands of yuan.

Most of these websites don't demand that buyers provide their identities when purchasing gift cards. Invoices for gift cards can also be written as "office supplies, labor insurance supplies, and training materials."

The E-gift cards are also being sent as extra "welfare" by companies to their employees.

There have been calls on policy makers to introduce a real-name system to the purchase and use of such E-gift cards.

Tax departments are also advised to strengthen invoice review and regulations.

President Xi Jinping, leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC), announced last June that the CPC's year-long campaign would be a "thorough cleanup" of undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance.