At local People's Congresses and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) sessions this year and at local hearings, some deputies and CPPCC members were "impolite" enough to press government officials hard for substantial answers on matters of governance and issues directly involving people's well-being. This is something new.

At the Guangzhou People's Congress session held at the beginning of this year, for example, Yang Jinlian, a deputy from the Panyu District, fired off a barrage of questions directed at suspected overlapping fee collection for labor security funds.

This was triggered by the Guangzhou Construction Commission's circular about centralizing the management of the labor security funds in a number of districts of the city.

Yang and a number of other deputies felt that the circular smelled of overlapping fee collection. They raised the questions with Sun Aibin, director of the Labor Security Office under the city's construction commission.

Deputy Yang did not let up his questioning until he had extracted relatively satisfactory answers from the official and a number of concerns were straightened out.

Another example: While answering questions about the loopholes in the college enrollment system at a hearing on January 26 in Chongqing Municipality, a deputy-director of the Chongqing Municipal Education Commission was time and again heckled by Lei Hengdun, an 80-year-old CPPCC member, for having failed to give satisfactory answers.

"Please answer the question directly. Say clearly whether or not you know about the matter. What are you going to do about it?" Lei demanded.

The official finally had to admit that problems existed.

One benefit of the forceful questioning was that the problems did not remain hidden.

Achieving government transparency is no easy task. It cannot be achieved by merely making public the regulations and rules, which, in many cases, sound specialized and complicated for lay people.

It also involves the process of decision making and decision implementation. In the absence of interaction between the government and the people at large, some important information still remains buried beneath the regulations and rules that are made known to the public.

Only repeated interaction between the government and the public can help achieve transparency in government work. This kind of interaction also helps clear away the stumbling blocks that stand between transparency and the public.

In our political culture, bureaucratese, cliches and empty talk have been wide spread for so long. Even at the People's Congress and CPPCC sessions, substantial questions are often drowned in seas of empty words.

Direct and forceful interaction between the public and the government will do away with this impeding factor.

Achieving transparency is a process of manoeuvring between the public and government, in which exorcizing pressure is sometimes called for.

As a matter of fact, the enquiry system has been universally adopted in modern government. Enquiry is a device through which representative organizations exercise supervision of government departments.

The Constitution of the People's Republic of China mandates that the deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC) have the right to motion the act to question the ministries and commissions under the State Council, China's Cabinet, during NPC sessions. This holds true for the members of the NPC Standing Committee during the sessions of the committee. And the ministries and commissions must offer responsible answers to the questioning.

This applies to local People's Congresses and the CPPCC, as well.

When more than half of the People's Congress deputies are not satisfied with the answers from a government department, they have the right to have the department offer new answers to the enquiry.

To our regret, this procedure has not been effectively implemented in our political life.

A number of factors explain this.

To begin with, the threshold for submitting an enquiry act is a bit too high. In addition, time set aside for enquiry during the sessions is limited. Also, People's Congress deputies do not fully understand the process of enquiry.

In view of all this, enquiry should be made an integral part of the representative institutions' regular agenda, instead of being treated as something designed to embarrass government officials.

People should also understand that the enquiry does not necessarily mean that those who are questioned have done something seriously wrong.

In addition, the bar for submitting an enquiry act should be lowered so that enquiry acts can easily enter the agenda.

Finally, the procedure in which the enquiry is conducted ought to be improved so that smooth exchanges between the questioner and the questioned can be guaranteed.

The author is a sociology professor at Tsinghua University

(China Daily 03/07/2007 page9)