From China Youth Daily via Yulun Jiandu, translated by CDT:
Finance Minister Jin Renqing said in a national finance system construction conference that China plans to set up a modern government finances management system in three years. Golden Finance Project phase I, according to the Beijing News, will enable the Chinese government to securely and effectively use and manage trillions of fiscal yuan, and will make the budgets more understandable.
It’s not a surprise that the government tries to codify the budgets, making it difficult for the legislature to understand them and, of course, cast doubts on them before voting.
But a more urgent question seems to be, the budgets should be also be able to be seen by the public.
Now, government budgets are classified and not open to public. In 1951, Beijing issued a state secrets regulation that categorized budgets as one of the secrets. Although the regulation was later abolished, but the mentality of treating budgets as secrets hasn’t change since.
If this is one of the expectations from the Project, it is worth waiting to see. [Full Text]
