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"the special maintenance funds applied for by your community have now been registered for use." at the end of april this year, a sudden text message from the chengdu housing and urban-rural development bureau confused mr. yang and other owners who live in phase 1 of shangjin yiyuen in chengdu hi-tech zone.

mr. yang said that the community did not have an owner's committee. how could the special funds for exterior wall repairs be quietly registered without a vote by the owners or public notice? in addition, two buildings in the community whose exterior walls were not damaged were also included in the list of maintenance funds. out of concern about the compliance of the registration process and whether the maintenance funds would be abused, mr. yang and other owners wanted to see the original signed documents and related registration materials.

they asked the property management, street and community in succession, and were told that the materials had been submitted to the housing and urban-rural development bureau and that they had to go to the bureau to check.

on july 1, mr. yang, as the owner's representative, came to the park city construction bureau of the high-tech zone and asked to be informed of the above information via email. 21 days later, he received a "notice of information processing fees for government information disclosure": "there are a total of 1,500 pages of information that can be disclosed to you. the fee is calculated based on the amount of information, and you need to pay an information processing fee of 54,700 yuan."

the basis for charging information processing fees comes from the regulations on government information disclosure (hereinafter referred to as the regulations) revised in 2019. the regulations stipulate that administrative agencies shall not charge fees for providing government information upon application. however, if the number and frequency of applicants' applications for disclosure of government information clearly exceed a reasonable range, administrative agencies may charge information processing fees.

yang weidong, a professor at the institute of rule of law and government of china university of political science and law, participated in the early drafting and revision of the regulations. in an interview with china newsweek, he said that the establishment of information processing fees is mainly to regulate the abuse of application rights. however, in practice, this regulation has become alienated, and high or even sky-high fees have become a "stumbling block" for normal applications, and the protection of the right to know and the right to supervise of some applicants has also been affected.

picture/tuchong creative

it should be disclosed proactively, but it is charged

mr. yang couldn't understand why, even if he printed out all the information he applied for, it would only cost a few hundred yuan at most, at the market price of 50 cents per sheet. "but now the price per sheet is as high as 36 yuan. is that reasonable?"

the "regulations on the management of information processing fees for government information disclosure" (hereinafter referred to as the "regulations") implemented by the general office of the state council in 2021 clearly stipulate that information processing fees can be calculated on a per-item or per-volume basis, and both adopt an excess progressive method.

if the fee is charged on a piece-by-piece basis, the same applicant will be free of charge if he or she applies for 10 or fewer applications per month; from the 11th to the 30th application, a fee of rmb 100 will be charged for each application; for applications exceeding 30, the fee will increase by rmb 100 for every additional 10 applications.

if the fee is calculated by volume, there is no charge for materials of 30 pages or less. from page 31 to page 100, there is a charge of rmb 10 per page; from page 101 to page 200, there is a charge of rmb 20 per page; and for the part exceeding 200 pages, there is a charge of rmb 40 per page.

as experts have said, information processing fees are not paper costs. zhang li, deputy dean of the law school of china university of political science and law, told china newsweek that this fee has a specific orientation, which is to regulate the abuse of application rights by raising the economic threshold.

after weighing the pros and cons, mr. yang gave up paying the fee. according to the regulations, this also means that the administrative authority will no longer process mr. yang's application.

mr. yang is not the only one who was asked to pay a high information processing fee for applying for information disclosure. last year, ms. chen from putian, fujian, was also told that she had to pay more than 120,000 yuan in information processing fees to obtain information on compensation for relocation.

ms. chen told china newsweek that her village was approved for a road construction project in 2016, and the construction scope involved her family's four houses. after hearing that the compensation plans for the relocated households in the village were different and there were "secret operations", ms. chen suspected that her compensation was lower than that of other villagers, so she asked the relevant department, but the other party was always unwilling to respond to this matter.

in order to understand the true situation of compensation, ms. chen applied to the hanjiang district government of putian city in may last year for disclosure of three pieces of information, including compensation and resettlement standards, measurement and assessment of each expropriated person, and compensation situation of each expropriated person (compensation and resettlement method, resettlement housing area, monetary compensation amount, resettlement time, etc.).

one month later, ms. chen received a "notice of reply to government information disclosure application" from the office of the leading group for government information disclosure in hanjiang district. the notice showed that the compensation and resettlement standards would be provided later, and the remaining two items of information totaled 3,182 pages, which were charged on a volume-based basis, and required an information processing fee of 121,980 yuan.

shocked but unwilling, ms. chen considered again and again and decided to pay. unexpectedly, the notice did not provide a bank account number for receiving the payment. after further inquiry, she learned that "the bank account number for receiving the payment also needs to go through the information disclosure procedure."

the series of obstacles made her feel helpless, and she eventually gave up paying the fees. to date, she has not seen the other two pieces of information she applied for.

in fact, information on land demolition compensation was explicitly required to be disclosed proactively before and after the revision of the regulations.

peng chun, associate professor at the law school of peking university, told china newsweek that article 12 of the regulations, which came into effect in 2008, clearly requires: "the township (town) people's government shall determine the specific content of government information to be proactively disclosed within the scope of its responsibilities, and focus on disclosing the following government information: the expropriation or requisition of land, house demolition and its compensation, and the payment and use of subsidies." article 21 of the regulations, revised in 2019, reiterated this requirement.

in addition, article 29 of the "regulations on house acquisition and compensation on state-owned land" stipulates that the house acquisition department shall establish a house acquisition compensation file in accordance with the law, and announce the household compensation situation to the expropriated persons within the scope of the house acquisition.

in other words, the information that ms. chen applied for and was told that she would have to pay more than 120,000 yuan to obtain was actually information that the administrative agency should proactively disclose.

zhang li pointed out that the situation in which administrative agencies have reduced the scope of proactive disclosure is mainly concentrated in areas such as land expropriation, house demolition, and urban planning, which involve the interests of multiple parties, have large disputes and large amounts of money, and some are even historical problems that have been difficult to resolve for many years.

“zero threshold” and abuse of application rights

the scope of disclosure is the core of the information disclosure system, whether it was the first time the regulations were reviewed and approved in 2007 or the revised in 2019.

before the revision, the regulations divided government information into three categories: information involving the vital interests of citizens, legal persons or other organizations, and reflecting some basic information about the establishment, functions and procedures of government administrative agencies, which must be proactively disclosed free of charge; information disclosed upon request, for which administrative costs are charged; government information that endangers national security, public security, economic security and social stability (hereinafter referred to as "three security and one stability"), and involves state secrets, personal or commercial secrets, etc. shall not be disclosed.

as for the applicants, they must meet the conditions of "special needs for production, life, and scientific research".

with the implementation of the regulations, the problem of insufficient breadth and depth of information disclosure gradually emerged. two years after the implementation of the regulations, hou xiangdong, then director of the government information and government affairs disclosure office of the general office of the state council, wrote an article in the people's daily pointing out that a few administrative agencies simply and rudely rejected the people's requests for information disclosure on the grounds that "as long as the content is not clearly required to be disclosed by law, it will never be disclosed."

in response to this issue, yang weidong further pointed out that taking the "three safety and one stability" as an example, since the concept itself is difficult to explain and prove, administrative agencies have misused or even abused it when applying it.

at the same time, the disclosure system upon application has also been abused. among them, the case that has attracted widespread public attention is the "lu hongxia v. nantong municipal development and reform commission government information disclosure reply case" published in the "supreme people's court gazette" in 2015. the nantong gangzha district court once held a special press conference to report that it was a case of abuse of the right to sue.

according to incomplete statistics, lu hongxia, a demolition household, and her family filed at least 94 information disclosure applications to multiple departments in more than a year, and subsequently filed 39 administrative reconsiderations and 36 administrative lawsuits.

in an interview with the media that year, lu hongxia said that she filed multiple applications for government information disclosure because when her and her father's homes were demolished, there were problems such as incomplete land acquisition procedures, blank agreements being signed, and the names of the household owners on the house property certificates being changed.

however, the ruling of the gangzha district court showed that the relevant application not only involved land acquisition and demolition, but also involved information such as the number of government buses and the standard of food in the detention center. the court believed that the lawsuit filed by lu hongxia lacked legitimacy and was a typical abuse of litigation rights. in the end, the court ruled that the lawsuit would not be substantively heard.

this case is considered by the academic community to have promoted the revision of the regulations.

the revised regulations clearly state that the principle of "openness as the norm and non-disclosure as the exception" is adopted. under this principle, the scope of proactive disclosure has been expanded from the original four categories of principle clauses to 15 categories of specific provisions, such as the basis and procedures for administrative penalties, government procurement catalogs, civil servant recruitment and employment, etc. the scope of non-disclosure has also been expanded, including internal affairs information, procedural information, and administrative law enforcement case files.

it is worth noting that the threshold for applicants has changed. the revised regulations have removed the previous restrictions, that is, applicants no longer need to prove their interest in the government information they are applying for.

the head of the ministry of justice explained that the reason for removing the restrictions was to further protect the public's right to know and to avoid too much controversy in the identification of applicants. hou xiangdong also pointed out in an article in the people's daily that applicants, administrative and judicial authorities have different views on the conditions for meeting the "special needs of production, life and scientific research", which has led to constant disputes.

for applicants, information disclosure applications have achieved "zero threshold". however, in order to avoid abuse of the right to apply, the new "regulations" stipulate measures such as not processing repeated applications without justifiable reasons, requiring explanations, delaying replies, and charging information processing fees.

change and constancy

among the above measures, information processing fees are considered a highlight. many experts pointed out that the ambiguity in the design of the information processing fee system and the uncertainty of the concepts involved have brought new problems to the actual operation.

the revised regulations stipulate that the nature of information processing fees is "can be collected". zhang li said that this also means "can not be collected".

china newsweek counted the information processing fees collected by 31 provinces and cities across the country after the implementation of the management measures and found that in 2021, 15 provinces collected information processing fees, and this number increased to 16 and 18 in 2022 and 2023 respectively. in other words, different regions have different identification and operation of information processing fees.

regarding the determination of "clearly beyond a reasonable range", china newsweek searched relevant cases on the china judgment documents network and found that the standards for determination by courts in various places vary greatly. for example, some courts determined that 12 applications were "clearly beyond a reasonable range", while others determined that 1,088 pages were "clearly beyond a reasonable range".

what is similar is that the courts generally do not give specific standards for "reasonable range", especially specific quantitative standards.

in terms of charging methods, although it can be charged by piece or by volume, it should be pointed out that the above two cases both adopted the method of metered charging, which results in a higher amount. mr. yang said that the information he applied for can be divided into about 17 pieces. if charged by piece, the information processing fee is only 700 yuan.

as for the effectiveness of information processing fees in regulating the abuse of application rights, there is no clear supporting data. however, there is a data in the annual reports of various places, which is the proportion of "the administrative agency no longer processes the government information disclosure application because the applicant fails to pay the fee as required by the fee notice within the time limit." this data can reflect to a certain extent the existence of information processing fees and the impact on applicants not obtaining the required information.

taking jiangsu as an example, taking 2021, the first year of implementation of the "management measures", as the statistical starting point, the proportion of applications that were not processed due to overdue payment in the past three years accounted for 0.32%, 0.13% and 0.23% of the total number of applications respectively.

however, it is worth noting that some normal applications have been blocked due to high information processing fees. what is more noteworthy is that the problem of insufficient breadth and depth of proactive disclosure has persisted. zhang li pointed out that there are many cases where information that should be proactively disclosed is artificially set to be disclosed upon application or not disclosed.

mr. huang from guizhou suspected that he had purchased counterfeit goods online, so he filed a complaint with the wuhan dongxihu district market supervision administration where the store is located, and requested the disclosure of a number of data including the number of administrative reconsideration and administrative litigation cases, fiscal expenditure, and handling of complaints and reports involved in the information disclosure application from 2022 to 2024.

a month later, mr. huang received a reply from the bureau indicating that his application content was divided into 10 items, only two of which were subject to proactive disclosure and had been published on the official website with relevant urls attached.

among the remaining eight items, six, such as administrative reconsideration, the number of administrative litigation cases, and civil servant recruitment, involve internal affairs information and require processing and analysis of existing government information, and are therefore not disclosed or provided.

the only two items that can be disclosed upon request are the consumer complaint information analysis report and the food and drug supervision and inspection situation, totaling 179,132 pages, and requiring an information processing fee of 7.15998 million yuan.

peng chun analyzed that the information that was determined not to be disclosed or provided in the reply was actually the annual report content or information within the scope of proactive disclosure required by the regulations, and should have been proactively disclosed. if there is information that is not disclosed according to law, the agency being applied for should explain it.

mr. huang also said that the information he applied for was in accordance with the scope of proactive disclosure stipulated in the regulations. he did not understand why it needed to be disclosed upon request and that he had to pay an exorbitant fee.

regarding the classification of this information, china newsweek contacted the wuhan dongxihu district market supervision administration many times, but failed to receive a response.

peng chun believes that the root cause of alienation is that some administrative agencies abuse their judgment power, regardless of the purpose of the application, and crudely determine whether it is abused based on the number of applications, and there is no standard for the number of applications. under great arbitrariness, some administrative agencies mechanically apply the charging rules, blocking the normal application path.

insufficient power and pressure

"there are many reasons why administrative agencies do not want to or are unwilling to disclose information," said yang weidong. first, the vague system design gives administrative agencies a large degree of discretion. take "internal affairs information" and "procedural information" that are often used for non-disclosure in recent years as an example. these concepts are themselves vague and abstract, and administrative agencies have a large degree of freedom when interpreting and applying them.

taking "process information" as an example, zhang li told china newsweek that the cases published by the supreme people's court clearly pointed out that when a decision is made, the information that was previously under investigation, discussion, and processing is no longer process information. however, in actual operations, there are still many administrative and judicial organs that regard information in the "completed tense" or "past tense" state as process information and do not disclose it.

in peng chun's view, the fundamental reason why the implementation of the regulations has been ineffective is that administrative agencies lack the motivation and pressure to promote information disclosure.

yang weidong further pointed out that the lack of motivation is mainly based on the administrative organs' consideration of reducing administrative costs, avoiding risks and actual interests. information disclosure is actually a review of government behavior, and some governments are worried that once it is disclosed, it may lead to adverse consequences.

a person from a county-level petition office in eastern henan province told china newsweek that the most controversial areas for grassroots information disclosure are subsistence allowances and compensation for demolition and resettlement. these areas themselves involve a lot of interest distribution, and even "favors." "for example, the compensation standards are the same, but when the third party assesses the specific area, there may be some "tricks" and they may get more if they have a good relationship. if this kind of information is made public, it will inevitably cause disputes."

however, according to relevant regulations, this information must be disclosed proactively. some grassroots governments will choose to post it on the notice board, take photos to leave a trace, and then tear it up. if there is a request or feedback from the public, and the higher-level units urge them to do so, they will disclose it again.

yang weidong said that this "strategic choice" of changing proactive disclosure to disclosure upon request is a result of the administrative agency's desire to seek benefits and avoid harm. by "disclosing less or not disclosing" they can avoid potential conflicts and disputes, as well as public pressure and accountability risks.

the lack of pressure stems from the lack of supervision and implementation. although the new "regulations" set up an assessment system and a responsibility accountability system, peng chun believes that "relying on assessment and setting penalties alone is probably not enough, and we need 'real action'." he asked: will refusing to disclose lead to the relevant agencies or even individuals being held accountable?

how to further improve it?

many experts believe that improving the government information disclosure system is a systematic project. zhang li suggested that a special agency should be set up within the administrative organs to further clarify and explain the focus of disputes through operating procedures, typical cases or business guidance.

taking internal affairs information and procedural information that are frequently used in practice as an example, yang weidong pointed out that almost all information related to administrative operations, such as personnel, finance, internal affairs arrangements, case handling procedures, meeting minutes and internal supervision information, are classified as "internal affairs information".

he believes that internal affairs information should be limited to "pure administrative internal information", referring specifically to technical and detailed information, because this information is trivial and has nothing to do with real and important public interests, and it can be expected that the public will have little interest in it. it can also free administrative agencies from the burden of collecting and providing this information.

procedural information should be renamed "evaluative information of the agency and its personnel", including opinions, suggestions, views and other information before a decision is made. the reason is that disclosing such information will undermine the quality of effective communication and decision-making among civil servants.

regarding the collection of information processing fees, zhang li believes that on the surface it is administration according to law, but in reality it reflects to a certain extent the administrative organs' misinterpretation of the original intention of the legislation or mechanical enforcement. for example, the regulations stipulate that fees can be charged if they "clearly exceed the reasonable range", rather than "should" be charged, and should not be simply determined by quantity. moreover, if fees are charged, the applicant's request, subjective intention and interest orientation should be combined to first demonstrate what is "clearly beyond the reasonable range". many experts said that we should return to the original intention of the legislation and adhere to the idea of ​​"not charging in principle".

in yang weidong's view, on the surface, information disclosure seems to be just a judgment of "giving or not giving", but behind it is the confidence of administrative agencies in their own information quality and administrative level. however, we are still in the stage of forcing administrative quality to improve through information disclosure. administrative agencies are "half-hidden" and not very proactive in information disclosure. "one of the key reasons is the lack of confidence in the quality of information."

he gave an analogy, saying that information disclosure is like an outsider visiting a home. in the past, only acquaintances could enter the house, and they would only be shown the good side. today, with the public's increasing demand for information, administrative agencies should no longer distinguish between friends and non-friends. as long as visitors enter the house, they can have a full view of the room. yang weidong believes that this requires administrative agencies to "clean up the room", that is, to ensure that daily management is standardized and transparent, and truly "the door is always open, and things that should be disclosed are disclosed, which is the higher level of information disclosure."

reporter: xie xuewei