Transparent budget, happy people

Last month, Baimiao in Sichuan province became "China's first transparent township government". People hailed it for making public details of its administrative expenditure, including the purchase of a writing pad for 1.5 yuan. The once unknown township has hogged the media limelight ever since it posted its budget online, prompting us to pay more attention to budget transparency, a goal advocated by the central government and academics.

A few experts played crucial roles behind Baimiao's courageous experiment, and Li Fan, a political expert with the World and China Institute, is one of them. Working for China's budget reform for years, Li is not only an academic exploring and writing on the subject, but also a practitioner engaged in several budget-transparency experiments at the grassroots level.

Though Baimiao is the first Chinese township to post its budget online, it is not the first to make its expenditure public, says Li. In 2005, two towns in Wenling city of Zhejiang province became the first to make their budgets public. The governments of Xinhe and Zeguo townships distributed copies of detailed budgets among the deputies to the local people's congresses and members of social elites. The experiment has since been extended to other towns in Wenling, with the city government taking steps to promote budget transparency.