Officials feel naked heat
- Source: The Global Times
- [22:30 April 27 2009]
- Comments
Sunshine regulation compels 1,000 Xinjiang public servants to publish their incomes
By Wang Weilan
Illustration: Abdul Saeed Ala Atik
For the first time in Chinese mainland, government officials are being made to publicly register their annual income – and not all of them are happy about it.
Residents of Altay, an autonomous prefecture with an official population of 645,057 on the northern border of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, can now go to the local anti-corruption website – www. altlzw.com – and peruse the 43,374 yuan ($6,350) income of Alimas Abduhelil last year, plus the 2,000 yuan he earned from writing articles and making speeches over the last eight years.
Alimas, Party Secretary with Altay's Animal Disease Control and Diagnosis Center, is just one of 55 Altay officials required to declare their income on January 1. A further 945 local officials' income and gift details were released on February 17.
No less a citizen than Wen Jiabao himself has voiced support for legislation requiring Chinese officials make declarations of income and property when the premier was answering online questions in February.
"We must establish regulations and laws so as to make the system really effective. We are now actively preparing for official declaration of property," he said.
Alimas, one of only three officials to publicly document any income outside of his main job, refused to answer any questions. Two other officials declined interviews with Global Times.
About 70 percent of Altay officials told interviewers they were unwilling to declare their income, according to a survey mentioned in a Legal Daily article about the Altay reform.
No such survey exists, said the initiator, drafter and enforcer of Altay's trial County Division-Level Leaders and Cadres Property Declaration Regulation, that passed in May. "I never heard of any such thing," said Wu Weiping, Party Secretary of the Altay discipline inspection committee.