Roll back red carpets, Xi tells senior leaders

Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping took aim on Tuesday at the wordy meetings and over-the-top welcoming ceremonies which are the bread-and-butter of the lives of senior leaders, demanding less show and fewer hangers-on for foreign trips.

Top officials rarely go anywhere without giving stultifying speeches and getting fawning welcomes from local people, complete with heavily made-up children presenting flowers and pensioners moved to tears or song.

But president-in-waiting Xi signalled he was having none of it.

Visits around the country by top leaders should no longer be met by red carpets, welcome banners or banquets, said a statement carried by state media after a meeting of the 25-member Politburo, the party’s second-highest decision-making body, which reports to the party’s elite core, the seven-man Standing Committee.

Meetings must be shortened and “empty talk” banned, it added.

One staple of foreign visits always shown in detail by state television will also go – airport welcoming parties made up of students and residents. Gone too will be the hordes of trailing functionaries on such trips.