Dinner Party

Gòngcāndǎng 共餐党

The Dinner Party at work. (Source: Qiwen Lu)

Nickname for the Communist Party (Gòngchǎndǎng 共产党) alluding to the banqueting officials often put on the taxpayer's tab; literally "meal-sharing party."

Chinese Communist Party officials have become notorious for their propensity to excess. In 2013, the Xinhua-affiliated magazine Ban Yue Tan reported on the problem, interviewing a mayor of a city in the center of the country who said he wined and dined four to five times a day, or more than 1500 times in a year. Calling the CCP the Dinner Party alludes to gluttonous corruption while simultaneously throwing censors off the trail of sensitive discussion online.

Yonghu531zbw37q1 (@用户531zbw37q1): Is it so easy to eat the Dinner Party's meals? Unless you have a political background, the bloodsuckers will always be watching you, so that when you slip up they can turn you into a dried-out corpse! (September 14, 2015)

共餐党的饭那么容易吃吗？除非你有政治背景，不然会有吸血鬼始终盯着你，弄不好会让你变成干尸！！！[Chinese]

Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign is targeting bribery and luxurious spending by government officials. The years-long effort often appears to be more about Xi consolidating his power than about fighting corruption, however. Calls for officials to publicly disclose their assets have been squelched by the government.