New Trends in Open Government Information Research in China

Abstract

Although open government information (OGI) or government transparency is considered an essential component of good governance, over half of existing OGI laws worldwide were enacted and enforced in the past 20 years. China enacted its open government information law, The Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information in 2007, despite the fact that it is a non-democratic and authoritarian regime. After its implementation in 2008, the Chinese central government has been supplementing and revising the law to further enhance transparency. Still, research on open government in China is scarce (but see Piotrowski, Zhang, Lin & Yu, 2009; Tan, 2014; Yu, 2011), despite the fact that this piece of legislation is quite important for the country’s administrative and political reforms. Since the policy’s passage, Chinese scholars have been actively promoting the idea and improving its implementation. However, the majority of the research on open government information is normative and prescriptive, with most empirical studies focusing on evaluating the performance of open government information among central and local governments or developing evaluation schemes to assess the practice. With few exceptions (Ma, 2012; Wu &Yu, 2017; Yu, 2013), there is a paucity of research that examines government transparency as the dependent or independent variable, with a particular lack of quantitative studies on the matter. In tandem with the fast development of public administration research in China, recently Chinese public administration scholars have begun to study OGI quantitatively using advanced and cutting-edge research methods and design. In 2019, organized by Professor Qiushi Wang of Sun Yat-sen University, Journal of Public Administration Review, a leading academic journal on public administration in China, published a group of three articles on OGI in China. The three articles employ cutting-edge quantitative research methods and designs, such as quasi-experiment design, differencein-difference models, propensity score matching, and spatial econometric model. These articles have interesting research questions, solid research designs, and findings with significant theoretical and practical implications. They represent the current quality of public administration research conducted in China and indicate the achievement Chinese academics have made in developing the field. It is a pity that these pieces of quality research are written in Chinese, which is not conveniently accessible to an international audience. Therefore, I take it upon myself to introduce these articles to a broader international audience. Not only do these articles illustrate the quality of research Chinese public administration scholars are conducting, they also contribute to the much broader international field of OGI research. In this article, I also include a quantitative article on OGI published in April 2020, which was published by a multi-disciplinary Chinese academic journal, Ecological Economy, and written by a public administration doctoral student. The reason why I include the article is not only because it is the latest quantitative academic article on the topic published, but also it demonstrates the quality training and research of future Chinese PA scholars.