【英语中国】中国强化官员财产申报规定

China's government expanded the requirements on officials and their families to report personal wealth to the state, a move by the ruling Communist Party to combat corruption but one that stopped short of popular calls to make such disclosures public.

The new rules, reported in state media Monday, require officials at or above the county level in China to report any personal income, housing or investments held through their spouses and children, as well as what they own directly. Corrupt officials often hide ill-gotten wealth by putting it in the names of family members. The rules, issued jointly by the State Council, China's cabinet, and by the party's Central Committee, also require officials to report changes in their marital status, and whether spouses or children have moved abroad or work for foreign companies, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

Corruption is among the biggest sources of public discontent with Communist Party rule in China, and party leaders have acknowledged that fighting it is necessary to ensure their grip on power. Despite repeated crackdowns, many experts think the problem has worsened in recent years. China tied with Swaziland, Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago for 79th in the 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, a Berlin-based anticorruption group, a weaker ranking than in previous years.

Disclosure rules have been a particularly controversial element in the effort to fight corruption. Officials already are obligated to report some financial information, and leaders have broadly endorsed the need for more transparency. Premier Wen Jiabao, for example, called on officials to disclose personal and family wealth in a March speech to China's legislature. But the government has resisted popular calls for officials to release such wealth information publicly.

In an unusual sign of the tension over the issue, state-run media on Monday ran comments from Chinese analysts discussing how internal opposition had ruled out the possibility of public disclosure for now. 'The new regulation is a compromise,' Lin Zhe, a professor with the party's Central Party School, was quoted as saying in the English-language China Daily newspaper. 'Its actual effect remains limited.'

A commentary carried on the website of the party's People's Daily newspaper said the country's officials should be 'placed in the sun.' Supervising party officials and making these reports 'open to the public, open to the masses, not just in-house, still deserves to be the lasting expectation,' the online commentary said.

Xinhua said Monday that nearly 50,000 people had left comments on China's two biggest Internet portals in response to the new rules, many of them saying they hoped the provisions would extend further.

Zhu Lijia, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Governance, a government research institution, said the new regulations could be 'tough to supervise' without the public's involvement. 'Without transparent and open-to-public reporting, people won't supervise such reporting at all,' he said.

Mr. Zhu said part of the reason for the resistance to public disclosure is that many government officials see the prospect of reporting wealth publicly as a challenge to their power. 'They always feel themselves standing in high and powerful positions, so if asked to report their personal and family's assets, they would think it's a way of challenging their authority,' he said.

中国政府扩大了官员及其家属向国家报告个人财产的要求范围，执政的共产党欲通过此举加强反腐工作，但离将此类披露公开化的公众要求仍有差距。

据中国官方媒体周一报道，新规定要求中国县处级副职（含）以上官员报告其个人收入以及个人、配偶子女拥有的房产和投资情况。腐败的官员经常通过家庭成员的名义隐藏非法所得。新华社报道称，这项由中共中央及国务院联合下发的新规定还要求官员报告婚姻变化、配偶或子女移民或为外国公司工作的情况。

腐败问题是公众不满中国共产党统治的最主要原因之一，党的领导人已经确认，要想确保政权稳定，反腐工作必不可少。尽管中国反复打击腐败问题，但许多专家认为这一问题近年来已经恶化。柏林反腐组织──透明国际(Transparency International)发布的2009年度贪腐印象指数(Corruption Perceptions Index)显示，中国与斯威士兰、布基纳法索、特立尼达和多巴哥并列第79位，比前些年的排名更低。

在反腐过程中，披露制度一直尤其受到争议。官员们已经必须申报部分财务信息，而且领导们已经在多种场合表示必须增加透明度。例如，中国总理温家宝在3月的人大报告中要求官员们申报个人及家庭财产。但面对让官员们向公共披露此类财产信息的广泛呼声，中国政府一直拒不接受。

周一，中国官方媒体刊载了中国分析人士的评论，讨论了内部的反对力量如何导致目前不可能向公众披露此类信息，不同寻常地展示了这一问题造成的压力。《中国日报》引述中共中央党校教授林口的话称，新规定是一种妥协，其实际效果依然有限。

党报《人民日报》网站刊载的评论称，中国的官员应置于阳光下。监督党的官员并使这些报告向公众公开、向全社会公开，而不只是内部申报，仍值得民众长期期待。

新华社周一说，近50,000人在中国两个最大的互联网门户网站上针对这条新规发表了评论，许多人说他们希望这些规定能进一步扩大。

政府研究机构──国家行政学院的专家竹立家说，没有公众的参与，新规定难以监管。他说，没有透明度和公开报告制度，人们完全无法监督此类报告。

竹立家说拒绝向公众披露在一定程度上是由于许多政府官员认为公开报告财产是对他们权力的挑战。他说，他们始终觉得自己位高权重，因此如果要求他们报告个人及家庭财产，他们会认为是在向他们的权威挑战。