Transparency on spending

The Department of Public Security in Heilongjiang province, Northeast China, turns out to be the only exception to the government offices that had their procurement lists leaked. It seems the luxuriously equipped and ridiculously pricey - over 41,000 yuan ($6,200) - laptop they ordered is indispensable for their work.

The traffic police authorities of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, East China, have "suspended" their plan to buy 21 iPhone 4s, which they said would be "ideal" new-generation terminals for police officers on the road. The Bureau of Finance of Fushun, Liaoning province in the Northeast has abandoned its decision to order 7 iPod Touch 4s, which they said would be used as USB flash disks, and opted instead for flash disks at less than half the cost.

And a district court in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has "postponed" its planned purchase of two massage chairs on its procurement list, even though it said the chairs were much less expensive than rumored, the purchase decision was made with due procedure and the cost would be covered by their staff's own welfare subsidies.