China no longer regards the death tolls in natural disasters and related information as state secrets, reversing a practice that has lasted for decades, a government spokesman announced Monday.

"This is the first time we stand under a spotlight," said Shen Yongshe, spokesman for the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets, "We hope this is a good start."

The decision marks a major step taken by the government toward "administering according to law" and "building a transparent government," said Shen.

He attributed the previous secrecy to "decisions made based on historical background," but declined to elaborate.

Death from natural calamities used to be taboo among government officials. Analysts think that under a planned economy, from early 1950s to late 1970s, the Communist Party of China feared that exposing death figures could tarnish its image, draw blame from the public, or trigger social turmoil.

On July 28, 1976, the country witnessed the devastating Tangshan earthquake in north China's Hebei province. However, the report of a 240,000 death toll was only released three years later.

In 2000, China passed a regulation defining the death toll in natural disasters as a "state secret."

But the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, has driven the government to become more transparent.

"In fact, China has begun to make public the death toll of major natural disasters and annual totals over the past a few years," said Zou Ming, a senior official of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

"It is beneficial to wake up both the public's and the government's awareness of disaster prevention and relief," he said.

Monday's announcement, which abolished previous stipulations, has drawn a wide range of responses from various social sectors.

"Information publicity actually helps the government to build its trust among people, and its international image as a responsible country," said Fan Hong, a professor with China's prestigious Tsinghua University.

"It is already a shared international practice to release the death tolls in natural calamities to the public, be it 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the Hurricane Katrina that slammed the United States," She said.

"As a country with vast territories, China has also been haunted by various natural disasters," said Gao Jianguo, a researcher with China Seismological Bureau, citing that only in this summer, four consecutive strong typhoons have assaulted China's coastal provinces, the most recent, in Khanun, killing at least 14 people and leaving nine others missing by Monday at noon.

"This makes the publication of disaster-related information rather vital, to prompt more efficient disaster-relieving work in the whole society," Gao said.

As the Internet grows more popular, information is harder to be kept secret, said Liu Daoping, a local governor in southwest China's Sichuan Province, a place which frequently suffers from natural disasters.

"The free flow of information poses great pressures to our local officials," Liu said, "Just like criticism from superiors, we have to deal with these things conscientiously."

Chinese people today are getting more chances to peer into the government's secrets, ranging from state documents to personnel changes within the government, and enjoy their rights to be involved in state affairs.

The drafting of the "Regulation of the Publicity of Government Information" is underway. "It will do away with the government's original secrecy principle," member of the drafting committee Xie Shenwu said.

Keeping secrets is a way to ensure state security, but information publicity is another way to achieve the same end, an official who declined to be named from the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets said.

"One thing for sure is that China will have fewer secrets," he added.

(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2005)