BEIJING — Sales of mooncakes, China’s traditional moon-shaped delicacies, are struggling against strong headwinds before the pastry’s peak sales period.

In China, it is customary to eat this sweet on the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, and mooncakes have long been sold as high-end gifts for the holidays that starts on Sept 17. The mooncake’s struggle is due to a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown by the Chinese government, which has been tightening rules for expensive gifts.

At one department store in a shopping district in Beijing on Sept 8, dozens of varieties of mooncakes were on display in bright red and gold boxes at an area specially set up for the sweets. But there were few customers despite it being a weekend.

It is said that 90 per cent of the demand for mooncakes is for gifts, but a female office employee in her 30s said she will buy them only for her home this year.

“Sales of mooncakes are about half of last year’s. Business seems a bit slow,” a female shop assistant said.

One Chinese online media has called this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival “the coldest in history”. According to estimates by a mooncake industry association, most boxes of mooncakes are priced at 70 to 220 yuan (S$13 to S$40) in 2024, down from 80 to 280 yuan in 2023.

Overall mooncake sales are expected to fall to 20 billion yuan, down nearly 10 per cent from 2023. Production is expected to decline to 300,000 tonnes, down by 20,000 tonnes.

Consumer appetite has already been dulled by a sluggish economy.

According to a Chinese economic magazine, one hotel in the southern city of Guangzhou set a mooncake sales quota of 20,000 yuan per employee, and a female employee there said she had a nightmare about having to sell the cakes, as she was unable to meet even 10 per cent of her quota despite having bought 1,000 yuan worth of mooncakes herself.

A Japanese-affiliated company in Shanghai, which has been distributing mooncakes to its employees every year, said it opted for 100-yuan products in 2024, which is 30 per cent cheaper than those it offered in previous years.

The crackdown by the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping is also compounding the mooncake sales slump.

The Xi administration, which has pledged to eradicate corruption, has targeted the delicacies, associating them with corruption because they once became extremely expensive and came in ultra-luxury versions, including one made w...