BEIJING - At least 12 central government departments, including the anti-corruption authority, are nearly a month behind on reporting how much they spent in 2010.

By Wednesday, the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau and nine other central government departments had not released figures showing how much they had spent this past year on receptions, overseas trips and official vehicles. Nearly a month ago, the State Council, China's Cabinet, had exhorted the departments to release such information before June 30.

Among the other 86 departments that have released spending figures online, the biggest spender was the State Administration of Taxation and its branches, which spent nearly 2.2 billion yuan ($336.4 million) in 2010 to purchase and fuel up cars, to receive guests and to arrange overseas trips for officials. On the other end, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, a department responsible for alleviating poverty in rural China, spent 1.45 million yuan on the three items this past year.

The recent releases of such information mark the first time the Chinese public has gained a glimpse into how much of their tax money government departments are spending on official vehicles, trips and receptions. Critics have long singled out such expenditures as being ripe for abuse.

In a survey polling about 5,500 netizens, nearly 86 percent of the respondents said they are "constantly concerned" with the spending information that has been released about the three items, and only 6.3 percent said they were "happy" with it, according to a survey conducted by China Youth Daily's Social Research Center.

Zhu Lijia, a public administration expert at the Chinese Academy of Governance, told People's Daily that many people are frustrated because they cannot be certain of the accuracy of the published data. To bring the government under stricter supervision, authorities should release more detailed information instead of putting out general numbers.

Wang Xixin, a law professor at Peking University, said departments that refuse to open their account books should be subject to administrative and judicial discipline.

Meanwhile, nearly all of the respondents to the China Youth Daily's survey called for strict punishments to be imposed on government departments that fail to publish spending information or that fabricate that sort of information.

"The State Council has said that all central government departments should reveal their public spending by the end of June, and these departments should be punished for failing to carry out a government order," Wang said.

He said the public can file a lawsuit against a government department that has refused to release such information, according to the Regulations on Government Disclosure of Information.

Ma Jun, director of the center for public administration at Sun Yat-sen University, said releases of spending figures do more than enable the public to supervise the government.

"By reflecting government organs' uses of taxpayer money, the consciousness of citizenship is gradually awakened and formed," Ma said in an article published in China Reform, a Beijing-based monthly magazine.

He said history shows that the spirit of citizenship arose in many countries from concerns over the use of tax money.

China Daily

(China Daily 07/28/2011 page4)