The Public Security Bureau of Kunming's Xishan district unveiled a new English-language website yesterday aimed at foreign residents of the district as well as foreigners planning on visiting Kunming and China in general.

The police website highlights police services, laws and regulations and announcements relevant to foreigners living in the Xishan district, including downloadable applications and forms and even a directory of all the police stations located throughout the district.

The new website comes on the heels of the Kunming government's recently launched English-language portal and is part of a drive to make the municipal government more transparent and accessible to Kunming residents and businesses.

Kunming's government is continuing to move toward increased transparency with the recent announcement that a new online platform dubbed the Kunming Information Hub (KIH) will be developed this year, according to a China Daily report.

The project was made public at a conference in Beijing on Monday, during which Kunming mayor Zhang Zulin (张祖林) presented the blueprint for KIH, which will integrate more than 100 municipal government and news websites. Administrative information such as municipal budgets and expenditures plus government procurement costs will be featured on the site.

In addition to making local government more transparent, KIH will serve as a platform for Kunming residents to register complaints and provide feedback to different governmental departments and offices. Aside from serving resident needs, KIH also aims to facilitate investment in Kunming and local business development.

The project blueprint, which has already been ratified, includes teams which will handle online complaints and petitions. Government departments will reportedly be issued yellow or red warning cards if they are slow to respond to complaints from Kunming residents and offices will be "graded by the public on a feedback sheet" as part of a new administrative accountability system.

China Daily will also assist Kunming in building a basic English-language version of KIH in order to increase the Kunming government's transparency in the eyes of current and potential foreign investors, the report said.

The announcement of the pending launch of KIH comes several months after Kunming media released a list of all municipal government officials including contact information and their work responsibilities.

A current buzzword in Kunming officialdom is 'soft environment' (软环境), which covers impalpable influences on daily life such as policies, laws and regulations. On Friday the Kunming Daily announced that "Kunming will put everything it has into creating a top-quality soft environment" (see image).

The next day, the newspaper took local government transparency in China to a new level. David Bandurski at China Media Project summarizes what happened:

"Since the weekend the Web has buzzed in China with the news that Kunming Daily, the mouthpiece of top leaders in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, printed a list of the names of city officials, their contact numbers and their specific areas of responsibility.

The February 16 edition of Kunming Daily included a four-page spread with information on local government officials. An online copy of the list, which ran on the Kunming news site www.clzg.cn, was feverishly downloaded by Web users, according to a report in today's China Youth Daily."

This rare example of transparency by a local government in China precedes a much-hyped upcoming national law regarding openness of information that is scheduled for approval in May.

According to Kunming's top official, party secretary Ying Yongsheng (应永生), a manual regarding Kunming's soft environment will be publicized soon to make the city's government more navigable for residents and investors.

Image: Kunming Daily