State Councilor Xiao Jie urged promoting openness in government affairs centered on the people, in an article published on Sept 9 by the Study Times, a newspaper run by the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

Improving transparency in government affairs is an important part of the Chinese government to serve the people, be responsible for the people and accept the people’s supervision, he said, adding that government affairs transparency ensures the people’s principal position and builds a bridge between the government and the people.

The government can better understand the people’s demands and gain advice and wisdom from them, while enabling the people to learn about and supervise the government’s work.

Government affairs transparency is a significant link in the modernization of China’s national governance, Xiao said. By raising transparency, the whole society can learn more about various social systems, find any problems and shortcomings and keep optimizing the systems.

The state councilor also introduced the new achievements in promoting government affairs transparency with more practices, improving systems, more modern information and technology application since the 18th CPC National Congress.

The governments’ websites have become the basic channel of information disclosure, and there have been about 16,000 websites at all levels of governments in China. New media has been widely used, including Weibo, WeChat and mobile clients, he noted.

The development of information technology has brought new challenges to government affairs disclosure, and the modern information tide has become one of the largest variables testing governance. Currently, China has about 854 million netizens, and 847 million of them are mobile phone users. Sometimes rumors can spread quickly, which brings a new challenge to government affairs disclosure, said the state councilor.

The transformation of government functions is also raising a new task for government affairs disclosure. The focus of government affairs disclosure is required to shift with the transformation of government functions in order to better support the transformation and to build a service-oriented government that can satisfy the people, Xiao said.

He called for efforts to respond to public concerns in a timely manner and optimize Internet Plus government services. Government information management should also be strengthened, covering the whole process, such as information production, acquisition, storage, and processing, Xiao added.