China Media: September 12, 2008: Environmental Transparency in China?

The September 12, 2008, edition of Asia Times Online included this interesting article on governmental transparency or lack thereof in China today.

See
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JI12Ad01.html

It begins:

China's transparency is just thin air
By Owen Fletcher

BEIJING - May's arrival this year armed Huang Youjian for a short-lived fight against the government.

Huang, a retiree from Rucheng county in the southern province of Hunan, saw a local government report last autumn that revealed a possible corrupt deal involving his former employer, the county waterworks. Millions of dollars in investment appeared to have disappeared in the state-owned enterprise's partial privatization.

Huang demanded that the county authorities make the report public. They refused.

So, when China's first national regulations on government information openness took effect on May 1, Huang filed a case

with the county court. He requested that the authorities be ordered to disclose the report's contents.

Four months later, the report remains confidential. Both the county court and an intermediate city court rejected Huang's case. Huang appealed to the Hunan High Court in June. He is still waiting for a response.

With cases like Huang's hitting dead ends around the country, China's new regulations on information openness appear to be making little mark on a government unprepared to concede rights to citizens.