THE top news over the weekend has been the horrible air quality in many parts of the country.

In Beijing, which was among the worst hit by dense smog enveloping a swath of China, the city's air quality index crashed 500, the upper measured pollution limit, for three consecutive days.

Commenting on the alarmingly high readings, Du Shaozhong, former deputy chief and spokesman for Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau, quipped in his personal weibo, or microblog, that "in year terms, Beijing's air quality never really met the standards... The situation is like a sick man running a high fever. Only his temperature is taken, but no action is taken to calm the fever."

Du's candor was well received as his words hit home to an audience fed up with official attempts to explain away worsening air pollution.

Though he was tweeting in a personal capacity, Du displayed a rare way with words often not shared by his peers.

Guan hua

Except for a few who have a penchant for waxing poetic in delivering public speeches, Chinese officials are seldom known for their command of oratory. Their speech is laden with an impenetrable jargon known famously as guan hua, or boilerplate.

It is common to hear officials holding forth on something that seems to be encrypted and warrants deciphering. Their style is monotonous, cumbersome and devoid of meaning. One cannot help but wonder, would it kill them to talk like a human, and less like a robot?

In a word, many of our civil servants have lost the ability to communicate in an accessible language with the very people they claim to represent.

Guan hua, along with lengthy meetings, red tape and formalism, is the biggest scourge of Chinese bureaucracy, to the great annoyance of not just the public, but some Party organs as well.

Tolerance of guan hua appears to have reached a limit as People's Daily recently carried out an unprecedented survey to give a voice to pent-up popular resentment of abstruse bureaucratese.

In a microblog entry posted on January 8, the august Party newspaper invited the public to name what they perceive as the most undesirable official catchphrases.

Responses were quick. On the following day, the newspaper published the poll's initial results. Among the top candidates were phrases such as "attach great importance," "personally inquire about," and "give instructions on the spot." As every informed Chinese citizen will tell you, the subject that precedes these phrases is invariably "leaders" or "cadres."

Media professionals find themselves in an embarrassing position of having to perpetuate the usage of such quirky technocratic jargons in describing the work of government officials.

These words are intended to distinguish our officials, to flatter them, to give them the media exposure they crave, so that in the case of a fatal car accident, they are the first to "personally ask after" the victims and their families; and whenever roads cave in, bridges collapse and coal mines explode, they are the brave ones directing repair and rescue work on site, rather than engineers or safety experts.

A big reason the general populace has grown sick of these phrases is that the benevolence and enlightenment of leaders they convey is often anything but true.

For instance, after every major construction debacle hinting strongly at corruption, decrees are always issued to "speed up the investigation and strictly probe any person involved, no matter how high their status. And any official misconduct will be sternly punished to prevent similar accidents," People's Daily reported last Thursday.

Sweet nothings

Alas, as accidents reoccur, we all know now this is just another sweet nothing officials bandy about to deflect public criticism. They don't really mean it.

It isn't just the discrepancy between officials' hype and their real performance that disgusts people. The fact that many feel compelled to mindlessly join the chorus of saying politically correct yet bland, mind-numbing phrases also reflects upon the government, said senior Party historian Cai Xia.

The prose of the ruling Party is the barometer with which the masses gauge its governing ability, wrote Cai, professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China. A party filled with members wont to repeat boilerplate will not only lose people's trust but also expose its inability to govern, she added.

Many of our cadres believe otherwise, convinced that only a roundabout way of talking is a symbol of erudition, authority and insight. In fact, however, they say a lot that actually says little.

More importantly, independent thinking isn't encouraged in a system where supposedly off-message, off-hand remarks could cost an official his job more easily than a failure in governance. Consequently, many are content just taking cues from what they see as the Party line and playing it safe.

Over time, officials develop a discourse dangerously out of touch with citizens' feelings and needs.

In this very discourse there is no official's sound bite that isn't punctuated with rapturous applause, no meetings that are not concluded on a high note, no achievements that are not enormous and no reviews that are not unanimously positive.

Change of mindset

Xinmin Evening News carried a commentary on Monday saying the key to rooting out guan hua is a change of mindset, a realization that rituals matter less than action. For officials to serve the public better, guan hua has to be shown the door, and quickly.

That it still plagues officialdom indicates how established this practice is throughout the levels of government. It thus takes determined, top-down crackdowns to stamp it out.

With a series of directives and exemplary behavior from the top leadership stressing trimmed official pomp, paperwork and shorter meetings, we might hear less boilerplate tripping off the tongues of cadres.

But unless they are mindful that the junking of boilerplate is aimed at better public service, not pleasing their superiors, they cannot be genuine about the change. This is something they ought to "attach great importance to."