In 2010, more than 70 central government departments posted their budgets on the Internet. In the same year, 12 provincial governments, including those of Yunnan Province and Chongqing Municipality, published their spending statements on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Greater requirements

The publishing of government spending information somehow remains a formality when it comes to details of the information released. For example, both the Ministry of Finance and the State Food and Drug Administration failed to provide in this year's budget reports spending information on official vehicles, receptions and overseas trips, which always elicits concerns from the public.

Though this year the central government's budget report to the NPC released its spending in 18 categories, deputies said the report did not contain enough detail.

"It only has general figures," said NPC deputy Chen. "The expenditure in the smallest category comes to tens of billions of yuan. We still don't know the details of how the Central Government used the money."

Ma Jun, a professor at the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-Sen University, said it's imperative that government financial statements cover both how the government intends to spend its budget and, then, where the money actually goes.

The Ministry of Finance would publish the main parts of the 2011 central budget and balance sheet, which will contain more details than were released in 2010, said Dai Bohua, the ministry's spokesman during an interview in early March.

Jiang Hong, a CPPCC National Committee member and professor at the Shanghai  University of Finance and Economics (CFP)

"I think by making the budget public the government will win more trust from the people," said Jiang Hong, another CPPCC National Committee member and Director of the Public Policy Research Center affiliated to the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. "Besides aiming for greater transparency, I hope they will publish balance sheets that are easier for the people to understand."

Regulation

It has been three years since China's Regulations on the Disclosure of Government Information took effect in May 2008. Therefore government spending is definitely the information that citizens have every right to know about.

But most local governments declined the request of budget disclosure with an excuse of "confidentiality," said Wu Junliang, the first Chinese activist for government budget publicity.

Jiang said more needs to be done to regulate the disclosure of government spending.

"We still need relevant laws to clarify the ways government budget plans and fiscal expenditure are disclosed, and clarify how detailed the information can be," Jiang said.

The current Budget Law, which was enacted in 1994, has only a few unspecific regulations about the government spending information publicity, Jiang said. "It's fundamental to amend the law to improve the budgetary work and make government budgets more transparent to the public."

At this year's session of the CPPCC National Committee, Jiang made nine proposals to amend the Budget Law, suggesting the supervisory power of the NPC on budget management should be strengthened, and the terms and clauses on the budget information disclosure should be detailed rather than rough and general statements.

China's top legislature was set to review a draft amendment of the Budget Law in August 2010, but the review was postponed. It again failed to be included in the legislative agenda of the NPC Standing Committee this year and the timetable for amendment remains undecided.

"When administrative power grows far stronger than the power of the legislative body, the amendment of the law can be too difficult," said Li Weiguang, a professor at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics.

But Jiang is still positive about the future of budget disclosure. "If all the possible technical problems are solved, China is expected to reach international level in public spending transparency in three years," he said.