He's still at it. China punished almost 20,000 officials in December for breaching rules that are supposed to restrict their behaviour. Probably most of them had been happily shouting "bottoms up" as they downed drinks they weren't paying for.

Xi's still at it because the government structure and national culture continues to promote opportunity and temptation for official excess - not just in entertainment, but in perks and managers' striving for grandeur.

Opportunity is there because it's fundamentally hard to control millions of officials assigned to innumerable administrative layers, especially without democracy and a snoopy free press.

Temptation is there because Chinese government pay is ungenerous and because there's a strong cultural desire in the country to be esteemed and especially to act as a generous host.

This often results in shocking waste. When I lived and worked in China I was repeatedly annoyed at official dinners when the stream of food landing on the table was about four times as much as the diners could eat.

The problem wasn't just wastefulness: the cost of this was ultimately born by taxpayers, most of them poor.

Just weeks after Xi took power in late 2012, the government banned various forms of improper official behaviour. Among the new rules was a general demand for thrift. As bureaucrats soon realised, this was intended to stop them from shaking the public money tree for personal benefit.

As a result, they have become much less likely to entertain so extravagantly. This caution has extended to state enterprises, which make up much of the economy and must obey the government's internal regulations. Such companies are classified as "inside the system".

The temptation to overdo entertainment with public funds persists, however. One of officialdom's early dodges was to host dinners inconspicuously at home, rather than in hotels or restaurants.

The expense would be hidden in the books somehow; it wouldn't show up as "Lavish entertainment for big-shot investor who's thinking of bribing the mayor."

Xi seems to have a personal distaste for waste and excess, especially food waste. In 2020 he began trying to extend thrifty behaviour beyond the public sector, promoting a campaign called "Clean Plate". According to this, people should order only as much as they could eat.

I was pleased to hear it. For as long as I had been in the country, I had defied local custom by ordering or, at home, serving just a little more food than I thought was enough.

I got away with it because I was foreign, though, as the years passed, my friends knew I was quite aware of local customs and probably thought I was just a penny pincher. Anyway, they rarely finished all the food without my admonishing them with a snappy saying from Chairman Mao Zedong: "Waste is criminal." (It rhymes in Mandarin.)

Good dinners are hardly all that officials try to enjoy at public expense, if they can get away with it. The 20,000 who were punished in December would have included some who had spent government money on holidays, on enjoying the comforts of costly clubs, or on aggrandising themselves with unnecessarily splendid offices.

Finding an excuse for a government-funded holiday is something of a perennial, though it seems that spending a week at a resort for recuperation from public duties is now a definite no-no.

A favourite has been the study tour - for example, when the managers of a local health department see strong reasons to travel to some pleasant place to see how the hospitals there are run.

Sometimes the trip is carefully supervised and time really is spent mainly on the intended purpose. But quite often it's just an excuse for tourism: meetings are held and recorded in travel diaries, then it's off to see the sights.

MORE AGE OF THE DRAGON:

Australia has been a popular destination for Chinese official study tours. A Sydney friend who used to run a travel agency that specialised in this business regrets that demand for his services halved after Xi took office.

If an excuse for a foreign trip can be found, a particular advantage of going abroad is that the junketeers are unlikely to be observed by other Chinese officials.

So, a few years ago I heard that a Chinese state manufacturer had contrived to send 70 people to a trade show in Britain. Ten would have been enough to go through the motions of promoting its products, which it really had no hope of selling, anyway.

A contact on the spot asked me why he had found only two people at the company's display at the exhibition.

"The others will be shopping in London," I said. "And no one in China will know."

Before Xi took power, local governments loved to erect magnificent buildings, to give themselves face - prestige, dignity or an appearance of importance. Of course, the larger the project, the larger the price and therefore the larger the kickback from the contractor.

The result is that when driving around some modestly developed part of China you can suddenly see an edifice that looks like part of the Palace of Versailles in France.

In 2013, Xi imposed a five-year ban on construction of government offices.

Last year, 150,000 officials were punished for breaching the 2012 code of behaviour, according to Xinhua News Agency. These rules also call for minimising ceremonies, attending fewer conferences and less use of an irritating practice of blocking off roads to clear the way for government worthies.

In 2020, the number punished under the code was about 200,000. So maybe Xi is making progress. Or maybe sneaky officials are just getting better at covering their tracks.