Governmental fiscal transparency has been a focus of debate in China for many years. As taxpayers, citizens have the right to know how their money is being spent. However, the fact is that many of the local governments keep their account books out of the public's sight.

A survey released by Tsinghua University Tuesday stated that proper fiscal transparency is lacking in the majority of China's city governments. The survey, taking 81 city governments as study objects, examines their 2010 fiscal disclosures from eight perspectives, including whether these governments released information on government structure and function, whether they publicized information on land transfers, government debt and the budget and so on.

The worrying result is that only seven of the 81 cities surveyed met the basic requirements for fiscal transparency. Beijing tops the list, followed by Shanghai, Nanyang, Chengdu, Yichang, Sanya and Hangzhou.

The Tsinghua survey was conducted at city level. At the beginning of June, the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Public Policy Research Center published a report on fiscal transparency of China's provincial governments, pointing out that all the provinces surveyed failed to reach the transparency standard.

Different surveys reflect the fact that Chinese governments at various levels are moving slowly toward public finance transparency, despite the country demanding greater transparency in public spending.

Making governmental public spending transparent is an effective way to curb corruption and to guarantee the public's right to know. But administrative organs are unwilling to publicize their spending, since it's closely related to their own interests.

While China's governmental system has enjoyed high efficiency in terms of mobility, it also harbors the possibility of power abuse.

For a long time, the authorities have viewed government spending as a secret, which has created room for corruption and abuse of power. Despite these difficulties, transparent government finance shouldn't be an unreachable goal. It's unrealistic to realize fiscal transparency in a short time, but building a transparent government is a trend and what the public expects.

China has issued relevant regulations and laws to promote government information transparency, including fiscal transparency. But in the face of slow progress, it needs to intensify its efforts and adopt more measures such as further establishing an accountability mechanism. It also needs a feasible way to allow public supervision.