BEIJING — In his top-ranking role as General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Tuesday that the state would be taking “its most important step yet” in reducing corruption by “finally cracking down” on the use of eight thousand dollar cakes as bribes.
Although every Party administration has historically promised to target the perpetrators of graft, Xi’s inquiry into the “discipline violations” of officials Jiang Imine and Zhou Yongkang is all but unprecedented in scope. Xi first began to suspect the two men, both of whom were high-ranking Party members with ties to the oil industry, when he noticed Zhou “cramming like five, maybe six cakes into Jiang’s mouth,” ruining Jiang’s son’s birthday party.
“I had a hunch that those cakes might have been worth eight thousand dollars apiece,” said Xi. “And, well, the rest is history.”
According to a report by state news agency Xinhua, China has often had a problem with Party officials accepting bribes in the form of expensive luxury cakes. While cupcakes, souffles, bear claws, turnovers, pies, scones, eclairs, doughnuts, cronuts, and cakes worth more or less than precisely eight thousand dollars will all remain legal bribing material, many believe that Xi’s plan will make waves among the leadership of the Communist Party.
Still others believe that the cake crackdown is merely a means for Xi to consolidate his own political power.
“I’ve seen the way the Xi family throws down, and let me tell you, there are definitely some cakes involved,” once source claimed under the condition of anonymity. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all just a cover for Xi’s own demented, insatiable cake-lust.”
The purge of eight thousand dollar cakes from the list of acceptable bribes in China has proven inexplicably successful, causing other nations to take notice of the policy.
A similar plan was proposed by President Barack Obama, but had to be scrapped as “infeasible” when it was discovered that House Majority leader Eric Cantor was, himself, a sentient cake worth exactly eight thousand dollars.
