Can Stephen Chow rise to the CPPCC challenge?

"The country finally has a mission for you."

It's a line from the Stephen Chow Sing-chi movie From Beijing with Love, a wild and woolly parody of 007 spy thrillers, that has become a reality for Chow, who has become a delegate to Guangdong's Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Together with several other figures from Hong Kong's entertainment and media circles, including Phoenix TV anchor Sally Wu Hsiao-li, who is Taiwanese, and actor Kent Tong Chun-yip, Chow's name appeared in the list of delegates for the conference's annual meeting starting on Wednesday.

It's not the first time a famous actor has been made a delegate to a provincial or national political advisory body, but as a super star who has influenced a whole generation with satirical comedies rooted in reality, Chow made headlines in the mainland's leading news portals and newspapers.

While Chow's fans joked online that the comedy star's main job should be amusing people during meetings, whether he can fulfil his responsibility as a political adviser became the focal point in the media, with so many previous examples of star delegates failing to do so.

For example, track icon Liu Xiang, a national CPPCC delegate, has been absent from meetings or attended them without preparing any proposals on the grounds of tight training schedules. He once explained he was a delegate to "mainly communicate with and learn from others".

Other CPPCC delegates or former delegates from the entertainment sector include actress Gong Li, director Zhang Yimou and skit actor Huang Hong, but few of them have offered valuable suggestions, the China Youth Daily said.