China city considers placing ban on endless speeches by officials

Wan Qingliang, the city's mayor, has put forward a proposal that will require officials to limit their speeches to under an hour at key meetings and less than 30 minutes in less important gatherings, a media report said.

“I have already set an example myself by finishing my speech at 58 minutes,” Wan was quoted as saying by the Guangzhou Daily.

Chinese officials often makes speeches that go on for hours, delivered in a monotone, and audience members are sometimes caught dozing off, even in big events broadcast live on the nation's state television CCTV.

An opinion piece published in the state-run Global Times newspaper in 2009 titled “Why are Chinese speeches so boring?” lamented the “dearth of public speech capability” and said it showed a lack of charisma among officials.

It said the cause was a lack of training in schools, adding that “the 'official' way of giving speeches — sitting tight and square and sounding lofty and serious — has become a nationwide speech technique by default.”

Wan's proposal has reportedly garnered a lot of interest.

“In many cases, we discuss issues in a bored and tired state due to those lengthy speeches and there isn't much time left to make decisions,” Tang Jinhua, head of the city's agricultural bureau, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

He also proposed reducing the amount of unnecessary paperwork used in meetings.

“Some documents are not needed at all and we just throw them away after reading the titles,” he said.

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