BEIJING: A Chinese legislator fed up with lavish banquets and official wining and dining has proposed making the “squandering of public funds” a crime, state press said today.

“Public spending on eating and drinking is a waste of social assets,” Zhao Linzhong, a delegate to the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, told the Worker’s Daily. “We need to criminalise this by law, so I proposed amending the criminal law and introducing the ‘crime of wantonly squandering public funds’.”

Throwing lavish banquets has long been a Chinese tradition, both in government as well as business, a practice that besides wasting money, has also proven to be unhealthy, the report said.

According to the official People’s Daily, China spends up to 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) a year on public wining and dining, a sum larger than the cost of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric project.

“Although I myself am a victim of this tradition, at the same time I help advance this tradition by hosting meals and accepting invitations,” Zhao, who heads a leading Chinese textile company, said.

“For many years, the Communist Party and government have issued restrictions on wining and dining are more and more detailed and severe, but such lavish traditions have not been curbed.”