Can the government still control the prices?

The decision of the National Reform and Development Commission (NDRC) to curb prices of some of the staple food products to halt inflation has triggered off very diverse reactions. Public opinion is greatly in favor, since most of the public opinion would eat those products. Food companies involved are less enthusiastic and saw yesterday their shares go south.
The question that has been asked too little, like often in China, is how this is all going to work. There is no shortage of smart decisions by the central government, but the question how this all is going to be executed has yet to be answers.
In times of crisis the government does rely on some relics of the planned economy, like the neighborhood committees in Shanghai were suddenly revived during the SARS crisis. They were not very effective, as they had widely different ideas on what their tasks actually were, but it brought the government action to the street and at least stressed the PR-message that the government cared.
The prices curbs might be equally symbolic, since I'm not sure that the tools to effectively deal with those measure might not exist anymore after more than a decade of cutting back the number of government officials. My expectation is that the public will be asked to police the markets and some chickens will be slaughtered to scare off the monkey. Again, that will be mainly PR and perhaps not all that effective.

Update: The Financial Times basically agrees with me.
They divide up the economist between those who do not believe it will really work and those who say the measures have more to do with politics than with economics, in Anyway:

Under the new measures, retailers of food products such as milk, pork and eggs will need to seek permission from local price bureaux, institutions that have long ago ceased to have any effective controls over produce markets.