Trimming bureaucratic fat has been on Beijing's mind in the past, and making government leaner, smaller and more efficient has been an articulated goal of at least the five previous cabinets.
Five rounds of government restructuring have followed, but Beijing seems to be a classic example of a half-hearted, yo-yo dieter. After going in cycles from expansion to reduction and back again, the only thing that has been proved is that the world's largest bureaucracy is extremely buoyant.
The word is that the latest cabinet revamp, to be unveiled today at the National People's Congress' session, is going to be the real deal. Li Junru , vice-president of the Central Party School - the Communist Party's top think-tank - has even billed it as 'a potential breakthrough in China's political reform'.
The key feature of this round of restructuring, as Premier Wen Jiabao stressed in his work report last week, will be 'an accelerated transformation of government function'.
A service-oriented, macro-regulating government would replace the control-obsessed, micro-meddling one that has increasingly hurt the country's booming market economy.
'Previous government reorganisations have mainly focused on downsizing. This one is meant to be qualitatively different. The pace and depth of this round of administrative reform are going to be beyond expectations,' said Tang Tiehan , a delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice-president of the National School of Administration.