The examination and approval procedures of central government departments should be made more transparent to reduce corruption, says a commentary in Beijing News. An excerpt follows:

The State Council is now making a plan to reform local governments and enterprises' representative offices in Beijing. The more than 5,000 such representative offices are now facing their biggest ever crisis of survival. Some grass-roots governments' Beijing representative offices may be dissolved.

The many representative offices have become a problem indeed. It is reported that some such offices are centers of corruption. Those offices provide all kinds of services to local officials, their families and relatives who come to Beijing for business or personal reasons.

Also, as pointed out in the nation's audit report, some representative offices are major channels for regional governments to bribe ministry-level departments for favorable policies or more financial support. The representative offices have spent large amounts of money every year for that purpose.

Therefore, it is necessary to straighten out the issue of representative offices through administrative measures. The real problem, however, does not lie in the existence of the representative offices, but in the transparency of related departments' decision-making procedures.

Local governments have close relations with central government departments. For example, the central government will give transfer payments to regional governments, and large regional investment projects should be approved by the central government.

But as the decision-making procedures are not transparent enough in some government departments in charge of the above-mentioned tasks, some local governments and enterprises then get the urge to use grey methods to maneuver for advantage with their representative offices.

The local governments' financial systems are not strict enough. There are many loopholes in the representative offices' financial management. It is a must to check the representative offices. But central departments' power must also be restricted.

(China Daily September 5, 2006)