According to a recently issued decree, the Shanghai municipal government will take the lead by holding press conferences on government work once every two weeks, while the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the CPPCC, the local Higher People's Court and the People's Procuratorate will follow suit.

Shanghai is not alone in this new undertaking. Earlier this year, the Beijing municipal government began requiring all of its major subordinate departments to appoint a leader as its spokesperson to release information to the public on a regular basis.

On May 28, the government of central China's Henan Province held a symposium to discuss how to learn from the experiences of Beijing and Shanghai in the near future. And in Qingdao, a coastal city in east China's Shandong Province, the first regular government press conference has been scheduled for Friday.

The nationwide emergence of the spokesperson system at the local government level will establish a standard procedure for the release of government information and has demonstrated China's determination to increase transparency in its government operations, said Professor Pu Xingzu with the School of International Affairs and Public Relations at the prestigious Fudan University.

During China's over-2,000-year-long feudal history, ordinary Chinese people became accustomed to being excluded from participation in government decision-making and to blindly following official orders. A favorite philosophy for Chinese rulers in ancient times was that "you should make the common people do what they are told, but never let them know why."

Since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, a modern administrative system has been gradually established in the country, and, beginning in the 1990s, the country began implementing unprecedented, massive reforms to make its government more transparent.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2003)