The Blurred Boundaries Between Budget Transparency and State Secrecy: a Survey of Three Departments Across 36 Chinese Municipalities

The tension between ensuring open government information and maintaining national security is a widespread problem around the world. This study focuses on the disclosure of budgetary information and its tension with vaguely defined state secrecy requirements in the Chinese context. Through a survey of three government departments that potentially involve state secrets across 36 Chinese municipalities, we find that there exists no consensus on whether to make budgetary information public, even for the same department across different jurisdictions. In addition, departments that chose disclosure vary considerably in the scope and depth of their transparency. Without having the boundaries clarified by law, disclosure by request, as a supplemental behavior to proactive disclosure, can rarely be successful. Our findings suggest that future legislation ought to clarify the legitimate scope of restrictions on budget transparency on the grounds of state secrecy.