But not all in China are pleased.

Many restaurants, shops, spas and recreation centers that have largely banked on government-sponsored spending sprees -- especially during holidays -- are hurting badly.

"Our business is down this year," Tony Chang, a Beijing restauranteur, told me. "Many of our usual customers from government agencies have canceled their Chinese New Year banquets. We're down by nearly half."

Wang Lisheng, an employee at a "recreation village" in suburban Beijing, recalled receiving over 30 groups of customers from state-owned enterprises in January last year. As of last month they have only had a few individual customers.

"What has been affected is not just the food business," wrote the Southern Weekly newspaper in a commentary entitled "The Disappearing Evening Banquet." "The banquet has created a complete chain, and all the other related industries will be affected if the banquet shrinks."

But some do not think the changes will be lasting.

"This is what officials usually do after they take up office," wrote a micro-blogger on Weibo, China's micro-blogging site. "The society will relapse in three years, and then those officials will be even more greedy and corrupt to compensate for what they lost. Famished wolves will never become vegetarians."

This, analysts say, may be just a "new guard, new policy" scenario. "Xin guan shang ren san ba huo," a new broom sweeps clean, so says the the Chinese saying.

Since Xi Jinping, 59, took over as the paramount leader of China in November, he has rolled out a raft of decrees aimed at changing the leaders' "working style."

"Compared with their predecessors, the new leaders seem to show more sophistication, confidence and ambition," said Wenfang Tang, a political science professor at the University of Iowa. "They want to give unscripted speeches and hold shorter meetings. They call for the realization of 'the Chinese dream' or China's renaissance."