When statistician Li Deshui criticized local governments for their suspicious statistics at the ongoing full session of the China People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the nation's top advisory body, more than 100 Chinese newspapers ran the story on their front pages.

Li's criticism, along with last year's "audit storm" and January's "environmental protection storm," has revealed a new trend: government officials and agencies are shedding the traditional practice of covering up for each other.

Since the central government toughened up on supervision of departmental responsibility last year, reports of criticism between government bodies -- or "bites between ministries" -- have become common in the Chinese media.

"The GDP figures I received from various provincial governments were 2.7 trillion yuan (US$326.2 billion) more than the accounting of my bureau," said Li, director of the National Statistics Bureau (NSB) and a member of the CPPCC.

Li's open criticism was reminiscent of last June's "audit storm," when Auditor-General Li Jinhua exposed extensive misuse of public funds by several government agencies in his report to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature.

The public audit report, involving a dozen central government offices and local governments, was made public instead revealed only to a few at the top levels of government. Li Jinhua became an instant hero to the citizenry, putting enormous pressure on the embarrassed departments to rectify their misuse of funds.

On January 18, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) launched a campaign to force compliance with the government's environmental impact assessment regulations. It temporarily shut down construction of 139 projects involving billions of US dollars, including several hydroelectric power plants related to the Three Gorges Dam project.

The campaign was dubbed the "environmental protection storm" by the media, as it was directed against powerful, high-level polluters that habitually ignore environmental protection requirements.

"The success of these 'storms' can be attributed to the clear support of the central government and huge support from the media and the public," said Professor Wu Jiang of the State Administration College.

A dozen similar disputes have been reported between government agencies in recent months.

Last May, the Ministry of Commerce openly disagreed with Shanghai's policy of controlling private automobile registrations through license plate auctions, and a ranking official in the Science and Technology Ministry criticized Beijing's decision to buy foreign software last November.

The emergence of these unusual "bites between ministries" is not the impulsive action of a few renegades, said Wu. It is the inevitable result of institutional reform initiated by the central government.

In what has been called a "self revolution of the government," the changes to the Administrative Licensing Law that took effect last July clearly strengthen supervision over administrative agencies.

Early this year, the State Council amended the statute on its own working rules, requiring the cabinet to promote administrative supervision and carry out administrative activities strictly according to law.

Analysts here agree that such efforts have helped curb rampant abuse of power in the bureaucracy and increase the transparency of administrative operations.

"The strong demand from both the top leadership and the public will stimulate more government departments to take aim at one another," predicted Wu.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2005)