It’s become an annual tradition for luxury-market beat reporters to round up the latest ways that Western brands are clamoring for a piece of the Chinese New Year shopping frenzy. And, indeed, approaching the Year of the Snake, which begins on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal has curated an admirable collection of snake-themed bracelets from Bulgari, and snakeskin sneakers from Adidas. But don’t let the luxury industry’s aggressive grin fool you. These are trying times for their well-clad ranks. From Beijing to Geneva to Paris, a pall hangs over the men and women of fine linens and exquisite timepieces: alas, the Chinese government is trying to get rid of corruption.

Global luxury sales and epic Chinese political corruption have become so inextricably intertwined over the last decade that the recent kerfuffles in Chinese politics—the investigations and convictions and pledges of propriety—have been nothing but trouble for the privileged few. That became clear last fall, when political disorder in Beijing made it difficult to know which faction would end up on top, and one luxury-brand representative told the Journal that sales were down because “no one knows who to bribe.”

Some of the heaviest hearts are in the luxury-watch business. No industry has enjoyed such a warm embrace in China as the one that packs such enormous monetary value into a small, easily exchanged physical object. And, sure enough, the luxury watch business enjoyed a banner year in 2011, growing forty per cent. But then China’s anti-corruption campaign began, and by September, Bo Xilai was in handcuffs, and watch exports to China suffered a devastating blow—down 27.5 per cent compared to a year earlier, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. China Daily quoted an industry consultant saying the anti-corruption drive “hurts the luxury watch business a lot.”

It’s not just watches. In 2009, the industry experts estimated that gifts to government officials made up nearly fifty per cent of all of China’s luxury sales. In some cases, a businessman would accompany his bureaucrat friend through the aisles, but if that was not convenient—because it would get them both locked up—then he would leave a credit card on file, to be charged as needed. In 2009, a foppish Chongqing official named Ding Meng, who specialized in trading land for bribes, was found to have amassed two hundred pairs of luxury shoes, a collection of expensive ceramic tea pots, and a hundred Western suits at a cost of up to six thousand dollars each. At his sentencing, where he received thirteen years and wore a flattering high-collared black jacket, he chastised the prosecutor for her outfit: “You’re a woman and you don’t even wear better shoes than I do.” Before he was led away, he urged her, “Spend some money on shoe polish.”

In retrospect, those days were quaint. Today, the Party is eager to hang out some dramatic cases of corrupt officials, and the scale of the first hapless examples almost strain credulity. State papers this week are reporting the arrest of Gong Aiai, a bank employee in Shaanxi who used police connections to create bogus identities and buy dozens of properties worth at least a hundred and sixty million dollars altogether.

How far will this go? Does the Party really want to stand in the way of its members who want to mark the new year with the love of family, and Vacheron Constantin’s hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar wristwatch with a snake etched into its face? Those looking for signs of how deeply felt the Party vow to root out corruption is may want to look at Guangzhou, which had been touted by optimists because it announced plans to test a program that would require officials to disclose their assets, the way that some American officeholders do. How’s the test going? The first reports are just in, and it appears the disclosures do not cover investments or family members’ income—demonstrating a belief in the honor system to a degree that would’ve pleased Lance Armstrong.

In fairness, it’s not a huge surprise. Even before the first results came back, local officials had declared their opposition to the idea of forcing them to disclose their assets. “Officials are civil servants, not slaves to the people,” Ye Pengzhi, a member of the Guangdong People’s Congress, told reporters last month. He said government officials should be given “privacy” around their assets—“the same way that sick people get privacy for their medical records.”

Photograph: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg/Getty