Law to enhance transparency

The State Council, China's Cabinet, recently published a plan for the government's legislative work in 2017, which includes revising the existing government information disclosure regulation.

Since promulgated in early 2007 in a move to improve the transparency of government work and promote governance in accordance with the law, the regulation on government information disclosure has played a positive role in promoting greater government openness.

That more and more people have requested government departments to disclose information in recent years, even resorting to legal means in some instances, is a reflection of the huge influence the information disclosure regulation has had on the public's way of thinking and modernized the country's governance.

However, as stipulated by the regulation, the limited scope of subjects obliged to make public their affairs, has also gradually made it out of step with the enormous social changes that have taken place. For example, the regulation's stipulation that administrative organs should record and preserve relevant information during their work may be interpreted as public departments that are not administrative organs being exempt from any information disclosure responsibility.

Information disclosure should by no means be confined to administrative organs. In fact, in recent years, people's congresses, political advisory bodies, and judicial and procuratorial departments at various levels have all tried to promote information disclosure to different degrees. At this year's session of the top legislature and top political advisory body, judicial openness was even seen as a step toward promoting a much-needed new round of judicial reforms.

In the context of ever-growing public appeals to know more about the work of public departments, which is directly related to their interests, it is indeed necessary for the authorities to start the process of enacting an information disclosure law to bring more departments exercising public power under such kind of obligation.