Auditor-General Li Jinhua has made a name for himself for his courage to air the government's dirty laundry in public.

Every summer since 1999, his audience awaits an "auditing storm" when Li reports to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

Li brought the National Audit Office into the limelight in 1999 with what members of the NPC Standing Committee called "the best-ever auditing report," which featured frank accounts of the misappropriation of 3.12 billion yuan (US$385 million) of State money by 43 departments and direct subsidiaries of the State Council.

The shock waves Li's annual reports created have won him a sympathetic audience over the years, in the past three in particular, for his straightforward approach. Many powerful ministries and institutions have found their names on his annual list of shame.

The auditor-general raised our expectations to unusual heights in terms of his ability to bring misdeeds into the light of day.

But the violent auditing monsoon did not show up this year.

Li Jinhua named no names in his report on Tuesday, with the exception of the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission.

He did give figures to illustrate the extent of misuse of budgetary spending, but without assigning responsibilities.

That is a break from what people have grown accustomed to.

Responding to suspicious inquiries, a ranking colleague of Li's denied speculation that the auditor-general had come under pressure to substitute his customary iron fist for kid gloves. Instead, he argued, it was a sign that his auditing work had started to bear fruit.

The fact that the tone of Li's annual report has changed to such an extent, he explained, indicates his preference for practical results. According to the official, Li has chosen to focus on the bigger picture in his annual report and leave details of specific cases to day-to-day reports.

That sounds reasonable enough.

It would be sad if we had to rely on a once-a-year "storm" to know what had gone wrong in the disposal of our collective wealth. Public access to such information is welcome. That is part of our right to know.

Auditor-General Li likes to say that the government is not afraid of having problems in its offices exposed, because the purpose of such exposure is to have the problems corrected.

We trust the government's eagerness to clear its ranks. Faithful auditors are like doctors indispensable to the health of government organs. These "auditing storms" would have been out of the question had it not been for government support.

But to relieve public worries that the absence of violators' names in Li's report may mean a retreat from the aggressive onslaught on financial fraudulence, the government should convince them that such apprehension is redundant.

The best way is to make sure that the details absent from Auditor-General Li's report, including the names, do appear in later reports.

(China Daily June 29, 2006)