Transparent spending

While it is encouraging that the central authorities have publicized more government spending figures this year, we expect more detailed information and a stronger role for legislators to ensure taxpayers' money is properly used.

Budget information has been publicized since 2010, but the Ministry of Finance on Thursday released more information than previous years on the budgets of individual central departments and their expenditure on business travel, vehicles and entertainment this year.

The move is certainly welcome since in this way, government expenditure, which mainly comes from taxes, can be better supervised. Especially as China's fiscal income has grown more quickly than GDP for most of the past decade. In 2012, China's fiscal revenues accounted for 23 percent of its GDP.