AsiaPundit has been out of service for the past three days, which adds inspiration to reactivating the group blog.

To explain the absence. AsiaPundit is pleased to report that the team of Running Dog and Mr and Mrs AsiaPundit team was finally triumphant at quiz night at the local pub on Wednesday. AsiaPundit spent a blogging-free Thursday with Mrs AsiaPundit ahead of leaving Shanghai on Friday for a 10-day visit to Beijing to cover the National People’s Congress.

This year, a heavy focus is expected on cutting rural poverty, which will likely mean increased outlays for social spending and transfers to the provinces. Still, a proposal has surfaced to cut some fat.:

An advisor to China’s parliament has called for the enactment of laws to control the weight of civil servants in a bid to rein in corruption.

The aim is to prevent the civil servants from squandering public money wining and dining, said Miu Shouliang, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China’s top advisory body.

Miu, a businessman coming from China’s southern booming city of Shenzhen to attend the annual session of the CPPCC National Committee that started Friday, did not elaborate on any details, saying that measures should also contribute to regulating their working styles and improving morality.

However, some experts doubted the scientific basis of such method.

"The motive is positive, but it sounds not so reasonable as it measures the civil servants’ performance by the standard of weight," said Zhou Zhiren, deputy director of the Institute of Government Management under the Beijing University.

Sources from Beijing municipal personnel bureau said weight standards have been imposed by some special organs in the enrollment of civil servants, but it is unwise to apply the method to a wide range, as weight is an indicator of health.

Although that proposal is unlikely to get anywhere, AsiaPundit thinks that Miu’s suggestion should not be dismissed so easily. Although the science is flawed, this is clearly an attempt by Miu to further distance China from Maoism, which would be welcome. To imply that ‘chubbiness equals corruption’ seems to AP to be a veiled attack on Mao, who was clearly the fattest leader in modern China.

While data on the waistlines of China’s leaders is a state secret, held more closely than the Party’s preferred brand of hair dye, photographic evidence would indicate that Mao was much fatter than Jiang Zimen,  Deng Xiaoping, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao (not to mention Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang).

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