Premier
Wen Jiabao has called governments at all levels to be clean,
pragmatic and efficient while administering their areas in
accordance with the law.
Addressing a July 20-21 meeting attended by chiefs of provincial
government general offices from across the nation, the premier said
the government has the important task of improving the style of
governing while deepening economic reforms and continuing to
promote socialist democracy.
Vice Premiers Huang Ju,
Wu Yi
and Zeng
Peiyan also attended the meeting.
Governments at all levels should attend to economic regulation
and market supervision while giving more attention to social
management and public services. One of their important tasks is
improvement of their capacity to respond to unexpected incidents,
said the premier.
He said the governments should abide by the administrative
licensing law, which was designed to regulate government powers,
and promote the rule of law.
Under the administrative licensing law, which took effect on
July 1, commissions and ministries of the central government will
no longer be able to empower themselves with franchising rights.
Fee collection practices will be abandoned except for those
permitted by law.
So far, commissions and ministries of the central government
have given up control of 1,795 franchise rights, accounting for
48.9 percent of the former total. Provincial governments have also
canceled a large amount of related licensing rights.
"If the law is enforced strictly, the corruption that plagues
China's administrative licensing sector can be greatly reduced,"
said Wang Yongqing, deputy director of the Legislative Affairs
Office under the State Council, who helped draft the law.
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(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2004)