Online networking is no longer merely about news updates and gossip. It is evolving into a tool that facilitates the public's participation in government work.

Authorities in Haining city in east China's Zhejiang Province have decided to upload government documents to a microblog to strengthen public supervision by improving communication with Internet users.

Haining city government's justice department is planning to launch a microblog on Sina.com to post the department's documents and notices, said Jin Yizhong, director of the department.

As a newly thriving platform for interaction between grassroots groups and the political elites, microblogs and online forums are gaining favor among Chinese Internet users who want a larger say in the decision-making process.

When Ou Yang, a government work advisor in Wenzhou City, also in Zhejiang, tried to rent a bus from the local government for his colleagues to go on a recreational activity, government officials turned him down. They told him that if someone took a picture of the bus and put it on the Internet, people might criticize the officials for using government transport for private purposes.

Ou Yang said that the minor incident demonstrates the power of public supervision in cyberspace.

In China's financial hub of Shanghai, the municipal government puts all of its proposals online for public comments, said Xu Shiping, manager of Eastday.com.

In Leshan City in southwest China's Sichuan Province, the provincial development and reform commission has published information online about the provincial government's social development plans over the next five years. The provincial government department received more than 2,000 comments from Internet users after publishing the information.

Chen Dequan, an official with the Leshan City Government's development and reform commission, believed said, "It can help us make fewer mistakes by inviting the public to participate in the decision-making process through the Internet."

At the beginning of 2010, Leshan city government had to halt a plan to build a hydropower station after the project was made known on the Internet, triggering a flurry of online objection arguing that local water resources had already been overexploited.

Shu Bin, chief editor of Rednet.cn, said, "There are many supervisory institutions established across the country, but online supervision is the most efficient of all."

The use of microblogs among government organizations started with Chinese police, who used them to collect information on cases. Many government officials have also opened microblogs to enhance communication with the public.

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