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Income disclosure is vital to nation

By CHEN WEIHUA
Updated: 2009-08-04 00:00

The huge public expectation is pitted against the intense opposition to such a law from many public officials.

The recent round of public debate over the issue reached a new high when a signed article in the Study Times run by the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) called on officials who refuse to declare their financial information to quit office.

This is a clear message to those public servants. Yet this is still far from enough. Officials who decline to reveal their income and asset should not only resign, but also be investigated.

The reason is simple: those afraid of making public their financial information have something to hide. And, that something may well be linked to corruption.

So the option of leaving public service should not mean immunity from either scrutiny or punishment. We know too many people who have struck gold are former government or CPC officials. Their shady path to business success deserves to be  probed.

Income and asset disclosure should include information about the spouse and dependent children of officials, since it is an open secret that family members or even relatives and friends are often proxies in the process.

If the spouse and children are not included, it will make the disclosure law toothless and less effective in tackling corruption. Officials who are required to declare their information could then easily transfer the assets to their family members.

There is little doubt about the need for officials to make public their income and asset information. These people need to convince the public that they have not abused their power for any personal gain. This is especially important in China where so many high-profile corruption scandals have destroyed public trust in officials.

Such a disclosure system has already been adopted in some 100 countries from Europe, North America and Latin America to Asia and Africa.

What is ironic is that it seems such an uphill battle here to make officials declare their income and asset information while it is so easy for officials to make the public to reveal their information.

Just last week, Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng approved a government regulation on the verification of economic status of Shanghai citizens. It authorizes government institutions to probe the financial status of local citizens applying for government aid programs.

Experiments of an income and asset declaration system in Altay in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Cixi in Zhejiang province in the past two years are symbolically important, though they do not include all the financial information of officials, their spouse and dependent children.

Income and asset disclosure is globally accepted as an effective way to combat corruption. With official corruption becoming a top public concern, the legislature needs to show its resolve by passing such a law.

Approving or further postponing such legislation will be a vital indication of which way the lawmakers want to lean — toward the public or for the officials.