By Qiu Wei

Local party chiefs are leading the way in a pilot program in southern Hunan Province to put senior officials' personal assets under public scrutiny, the first move of its kind months after the top leadership of the Communist Party of China vowed transparency governance.

The program is seen as a step further in the ruling party's attempt to map out an official property-declaration system to meet the increasing public demand to fight corruption. However, progress is slow due to reluctance by officials.

Such a system seems to present a dilemma for officials at various levels, who face tremendous pressure from either side, as the public may doubt the authenticity of the information disclosed, while some officials may try to prevent full disclosure.

A total of 69 civil servants in the city of Xiangxiang, Hunan, including the municipal party chief, a top municipal legislator and the mayor, disclosed their property information online on the government's website.

Li Shihong, Xiangxiang Municipal Committee Party chief, owns an 86-square-meter government-subsidized apartment, the smallest among the officials who declared their assets, who possess properties with an average above 120 square meters.

Peng Lianyang, the Party chief of Quantang county, claimed he does not have as-sets in his name, whereas Peng Lirong, the Party chief of Dongshan, has reported three residences with a total size of almost 1,000 square meters, the largest among the officials.

Anti-corruption efforts to disclose officials' annual incomes have been effective in places such as Altay in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which began early this year, followed by Cixi in Zhejiang and Liuyang in Hunan. But previous programs only involved grassroots and mid-level officials.

Top-level officials are required to submit reports of their property assets and investment activities and the jobs of their spouses and children to the relevant disciplinary bodies, according to a communiqué released in September by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the nation's anti-corruption watchdog, after a key annual session of the CPC to promote party-building.

Peng Yanfeng, of the Commission for Discipline Inspection in Xiangtan city, which oversees authorities of Xiangxiang, said more than 1,700 local party officials were requested to report their housing assets, and it was a decision by Xiangxiang government to make public the assets of 69 civil servants.

"But it is difficult to verify this information, as we're unable to check the details. If these officials have unreported properties which are not registered under their own names, then we don't have any access to information,"Peng said.

Peng said tip-offs by the public remain a major means of uncovering false declarations.

An official at the commission who withheld his name told xinmin.cn, a Shanghai-based news portal, that the agency had received calls from the public claming information disclosed by certain officials was untrue, since the housing information was posted online in early November.

Investigations were underway, the official said, without giving further details.

Yu Lingyun, a professor of administrative law at Tsinghua University, noted that high-ranking officials, if found to be abusing power, are more likely to cause damage to the country.

"The disclosure system should include senior officials,"Yu said.

It is reasonable to break the ice from local levels in the practice of property asset disclosure, Yu said, adding that legislation will follow pending experience.

Civil servants' asset disclosure is part of the publicity of government information and an important anti-corruption mechanism, said Yu.

However, verification methods are not available yet, and it will inevitably invite questions from the public regarding authenticity and whether declarations are complete, he added.

"A mature, real-name registration system is not yet in place in China. Though authorities will examine the declared asset information, it is still hard to verify,"Wang Minggao, an anti-graft scholar with Hunan Business College, said.

He suggested a security-number system for asset disclosure.

An article carried by the Study Times, published by the Central Party School, urged earlier this year that those officials who refuse to disclose their property assets should resign.

"Information of officials' family property is in the public interest, and therefore is not privacy,"it said.

It also called for the disclosure of incomes and assets of recently promoted cadres and those in line for promotion.

Kang Juan contributed to this story