Results tagged “transparency”

In a surprising bid for transparency, the Shanghai government is planning to make its expense budget public for the first time ever. According to the Shanghai Municipal Finance Bureau, all collection, distribution and application of special funds, administrative and institutional unit revenues, as well as the welfare and sports lottery revenues, will be open for viewing by the public. While it's still quite rare, Shanghai's not the first county to lift a veil on their money spending. Guangdong Province recently released their expense budgets for free download by the public. The response was so great, it crashed the government's website.

• Tony Blair: China's New Cultural Revolution [WSJ] "Yesterday, just a week after the 60th anniversary celebrations of the People's Republic, China kicked off its first World Media Summit. It shows how far China has come—and how far it has to go. First, understand the problem. We all know China is a nation of 1.3 billion people, but that is just a statistic. Think of how we regard the United States—how different California is from Ohio, for example. Then quadruple it. Think of trying to meld China's 56 native ethnic groupings into one cohesive state. Think of the disaster, not just to the Chinese, but to ourselves, if it fractured."
• It's China's world. (We just live in it) [Fortune] "You wouldn't think the men who run the oil-rich country of Nigeria would have much spring in their step these days. The nation is plagued by a never-ending guerrilla war, one that has trimmed the country's oil production to two-thirds of its potential capacity. But now Nigeria is in the process of renewing production licenses for some of its most prolific offshore fields, and there's a new player in town making the traditional oil powers from the West (Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Total) very nervous — and the Nigerian government very happy… CNOOC."
• How To Deal With Corruption In China [Forbes] "It happened to Coca-Cola on Sept. 14, to Rio Tinto a month before. Even the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has been hit. The Chinese government has now investigated employees at all three of those companies in high-profile corruption cases. At Coke, a bottling plant employee was accused of taking $1.5 million in bribes. When your company is charged with corruption in China, you have to worry about not only bad publicity but also running afoul of America's Foreign Corruption Practices Act and a Chinese government that is increasingly clamping down on the corrupt activities of foreigners."

By Richard Yu