Budget disclosure tests public supervision
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail
Global Times, July 20, 2011
|
|
|
Tactful transparency [By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn] |
By Monday, 27 of the 98 central government departments had disclosed their annual consumption of public funds for three major purposes - cars, banquets and overseas trips.
The public has been questioning over the slow pace of disclosure and quality of released data. Nevertheless, budget disclosure is a practical measure for China's political reform and the trend of budget transparency is undoubtedly irreversible.
For many years, people have talked about public supervision of government spending. It was high time to take some practical steps. The aforementioned three areas of public spending have long been seen as being welfare for civil servants.
In some government departments, overseas trips are used as bonuses, and employees enjoy them each year. This tacit rule taints not only government units, but the whole social atmosphere as well. Disclosure of such spending may lead to a new round of social reform in China.
What we see today is only a start. Some officials are uncomfortable with such disclosure, because they have long guided social shake-ups and do not see the need to change themselves. Data disclosed by some departments are quite coarse and unprofessional. This will have to improve in future reports, because the public will not allow anyone to go unsupervised.
Making government affairs transparent is a big trend. The faster officials adapt to the idea, the less passive they will feel. They should not delay disclosures, or even forge data, because this will expose them to unpredictable and higher risks.
The era when officials could prepare budgets behind closed doors and lavish public funds on private purposes has come to an end.
Government finances were once listed as State secrets. However, they will become completely open in the future, and will be available for inquiry from the public at any time. It is a channel toward a clean government. It will deeply change the social view toward public power and embody democracy.
The growth of democracy will reverse China's ages-old top-down supervision. Officials should have a greater awareness of how to serve the public.
This relies on their personal virtue on the one hand, and public oversight on the other hand.
Budget disclosure should expand from the central government to the grass-roots level.
Local governments have much closer contact with the public, and face the majority of social complaints and criticisms. Local governments are major pillars of China's governance system. They represent this system's image and influence in everyday life.
A few local governments have taken the initiative in financial disclosure. Others should learn from these examples.
There are extreme voices saying that the Communist Party of China, which practices long-term governance, can never have self-supervision or accept public oversight.
Reforms initiated by the government spending disclosure will become a touchstone as to whether the CPC can solve its supervision problems.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)