Govt to officals: Show me the money

By Wang Jingqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-16 09:29

In the latest effort to improve transparency and prevent government corruption, authorities in Gao county of Sichuan province are requiring its officials to declare their family assets.

The county is the first to test the new regulation under Sichuan's Yibin city, according to authorities. Seventy-six officials from the region's towns and villages reported their assets last month, authorities said.

Another 400 officials at the division and vice-division level are scheduled to follow suit this month.

"Officials have considered this policy for a long time and we hope it works well so that we can extend it to other counties," said He Tao, an official of Gao's discipline inspection committee.

Under the latest regulation, officials are required to report family assets including the number of homes, amount of debt, salary, related bonuses and sources of other income. The declarations will be updated every year.

Luo Hongyun, an official in Shengtian town who has reported his assets to the county's discipline inspection committee's office, agreed with the new move.

"I see this as a way to remind my family members and I of not accepting bribes," Luo said.

"Besides, the reports are kept confidential within the disciplinary officials, so I don't have any worry about privacy issues," he said to Chengdu Business News recently.

He said all the forms that list the assets are stored in locked cabinets.

"We will use such information as an important source to know about an official's income and take it into account when investigating any cases of corruption," He said.

"We will also make such information public at the appropriate time."

Yibin is not the first city to have its officials declare their assets for scrutiny.

In Altay prefecture north of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the income of more than 1,000 officials was made public in March.

However, the declaration in Altay is different from Yibin and divided into two parts. The first part includes an official's annual salary, subsidies and other income from various activities. The second part includes an official's income from the stock market, inheritance, lotteries and other assets, which only disciplinary officials can access.

The central government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China had also issued two regulations in 1995 and 2001, requiring officials to declare their income. These were limited to an official's salary and subsidies and the information was unavailable to the public or media.

Yang Hongshan, a professor of public administration at Renmin University of China in Beijing, said it is another step forward for local governments to "make the property of officials, not just their salaries, transparent."