In a highly noteworthy move aimed at cutting red tape in China and grafting in the biggest top-level shake-up since 2008, the country's new leaders have planned out the revamping of government bodies responsible for railways, energy, and food safety.

In its `reorganization of Cabinet departments' plan presented to the country's legislature, the government has revealed its intentions of dismantling the Railway Ministry; a move which will result in the shifting of the ministry's railways operations into a newly-created firm, with its regulatory offices to be placed in the Transport Ministry.

Other then the splitting of the Railways Ministry, the plan also calls for the need to improve food safety, by giving more powers to the food and drug regulator. Moreover, the plan suggests that, with China being involved in a scuffle with neighboring countries like Japan and Vietnam over territorial claims, maritime law enforcement should be brought under one body.

The proposed changes laid down in the plan will apparently enable China's new president Xi Jinping - who is scheduled to assume charge, from outgoing leader Hu Jintao, on March 14 - to assert greater control over the most crucial sectors of an economy which, in 2012, recorded the lowest growth pace since 1999.

About the planned changes, Professor Ding Xueliang - Chinese politics professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - said that the changes underscore that "increasing domestic pressure and greater international challenges, and the sense of crisis among the new leaders is more striking than before."