Drive to cut spending bites into gift biz

The changes are pushing producers to transform. "The orders from private and foreign companies are getting more important for us," said the owner of a printing company in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, who declined to be identified.

He said his factory even started to accept small orders from individuals.

Some customers have said that forbidding the exchange of cards and calendars, which don't seem to cost all that much, might be going too far.

Zhang Lin, an office worker in Beijing, said that in previous years, she usually received several calendars from friends and clients.

None came this year. Although she said she'd felt some inconvenience, she also admitted that some of the calendars were never used.

It was hugely wasteful to print so many greeting cards and calendars at public expense, some experts said. And the costs aren't as low as some might think.

The paper used for greeting cards and calendars is high-quality, so the cost of a small card can be as much as several dozen yuan.

Just one post office in a small county was spending 400,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan in public funds on greeting cards annually, because it ordered "thousands of cards" a year, said Gao Bo, deputy secretary-general of the Anti-Corruption Studies Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

E-cards are becoming more popular as a way to cut costs. Kevin Zhang, a manager at a public relations company, was busy sending e-cards to clients and friends during the last week of 2013.

Giving gifts

In the past, some of his clients required his team to buy and mail many greeting cards on their behalf. Zhang said all those clients turned to e-cards this season.

There's also a huge variety of e-card designs, which some clients actually prefer, Zhang added.

Once a major choice for gift-giving, the high-end tea market has also experienced a slowdown over the past year.

Again, it's a case of the government drive to cut spending, said Wang Qing, executive vice-chairman of the China Tea Marketing Association.

High-end tea can cost more than 1,000 yuan per kilogram. In some cases, the price can be 10,000 yuan per kg. "High-end tea sales volume dropped 15 percent in 2013," Wang said.

"Sales of high-end tea last year fell a bit instead of showing growth, which is definitely the consequence of the government's new policy," said a tea store owner who only gave the surname Zhang.