Welcome initiative

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Welcome initiative

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-11 08:37

A healthy civic society entails a proper balance between State power and civil rights. That is, the functioning of the government does not interfere with the individual's practice of his or her lawful rights as a citizen; and the individual acts in a way that does not endanger public good.

Given the individual's inherent weakness in the face of State power, the emphasis has logically been on protecting the individual from abuse by the latter. Ours is not yet a fully civic society. But even for harmony's sake, regulating the government is the No 1 imperative.

We have seen and heard about plenty of initiatives to discipline governments and their functionaries. Yet, forgive us for saying this, many of those promises have been made without clarifying what the governments are supposed to do, and what not.

Without proper definition of the boundaries of government authorities, how can one judge whether or not a certain government agency or employee has overreached authority?

That is why many individual citizens find themselves defenseless when faced with abusive State functionaries, particularly when their actions are performed in the name of the government.

That is also why we applaud Chengdu's transparency initiative. We are referring to the city's decision to clarify government powers. If everything goes well, it will not take long for us to see detailed lists of the specific powers of each government institution in the southwestern city. The information will be available on the Web.

Chengdu will be the first to publish such lists. We have heard of similar approaches in the past. But that we finally see a city acting on it is what matters. We think this is a decision by some reform-minded city leaders which should be adopted as common practice throughout the national governance structure.

We have heard too much about the rhetoric of the rule of law, good governance, transparency and the like. But we have seen too little done to make a substantial difference.

Chengdu is not blazing a trail but what it does has obvious benefits. At the very least, it is directed at the very root of many of our problems in public administration. For one thing, without knowing the reach of a government agency's authority, oversight is at best nominal.

Were it not for the clarification, some leaders of administrative institutions would not have been aware whether or not some authorities they take for granted have a solid legal ground, sources with the local legal affairs departments were quoted as saying. What can we expect when public officials themselves do not know for sure?

We know this problem exists not only in Chengdu.

(China Daily 11/11/2009 page8)