Open government information in Chinese state-owned enterprises

Article type: Other

Authors: Hubbard, Paul^{a; *} | Xiao, Weibing^b

Affiliations: [a] Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia | [b] Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Paul Hubbard, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. E-mail:paul.hubbard@anu.edu.au

Abstract: While the scope of freedom of information laws in democratic countries has been reduced through the contracting out and privatization of public services, China's national open government regulations retain coverage for ``enterprises and entities engaged in sectors closely related to the interests of the people''. Our review of local implementation and court cases find that implementation and interpretation of these regulations is patchy. Outside these public-service sectors, we find a break between earlier policies for `openness in factory affairs', which emphasized the worker's right to participate in company decisions, with more recent `open enterprise information', which requires non-listed state-owned enterprise to provide public financial reports.

Keywords: Corporate transparency, open government, China

DOI: 10.3233/IP-170403

Journal: Information Polity, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 57-64, 2017