Measuring the Goals and Incentives of Local Chinese Officials

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the higher-level prefecture government did host a publicly available website. OGI requires that governmental units make available administrative rules and regulations, economic development plans, statistical information, budgets and financial accounts, procurement standards, administrative licensing, major construction projects, land acquisition and housing demolition, poverty alleviation, education, health, and social security measures, emergency contingency plans, and product quality supervision online. Table 1: LDA Topics and OGI Requirements OGI requirement Administrative rules and regulations Economic development plans Statistical information Budgets and financial accounts Procurement standards Administrative licensing Major construction projects Land acquisition and housing demolition Poverty alleviation, education, health care, social security, employment Emergency management plans Environment, product quality and supervision Other topics LDA topic Business taxation, Regulations and forms Agriculture, Development, Economic development, New socialist countryside, Regional development Statistics Fiscal administration Public procurement and tenders Government approval process Construction, development projects and construction Land rights and housing Education, Health and nutrition, Health and social security, Public employment Emergency response Controls on food and drug production CCP members and committees, Building civilized publics, Community government organizations, Cultural activities and channels, Family planning, Government committees and leaders, Government openness, Government oversight, Government services, Information openness, Investment information, Local government office, Media, Prosperous government, Student sports competitions, Surnames, Traffic and transportation, Workplace safety, Xinhua news Using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to analyze the web content 7
of 100 randomly selected counties, I find that county websites contain all topics which are required by OGI (See Section 3 and Appendix A for details on the 100 counties, Appendix C for data cleaning procedures, and Appendix D for technical information on the LDA analysis). Table 1 lists the 39 topics that were easily discernible from the LDA topic model. I find that all of the topics required by OGI regulations are reflected in the LDA topics, though many other topics not explicitly mandated by OGI also appear. 3.2 Government Websites as Intended Tools for Supervision Foreign observers, especially international development organizations, have highlighted the role of Chinese government websites in providing information and services to citizens (Horsley, 2007; Jiang and Xu, 2007; United Nations, 2012). In 2009, 43% of respondents from a national survey of internet usage in China reported visiting government web sites multiple times a month (CCNIC, 2010). Aside from providing transparency and services for citizens, one of the explicit goals of China’s e-government effort, of which government websites is one facet, is to increase oversight on subordinate levels of government by upper levels of government (Ma, Chung and Thorson, 2005; Seifert and Chung, 2009). In 2002, then premier Zhu Rongji said of e-government, which he refers to as “information means,” that: “Emphasis should be laid on the use of information means...so that government’s supervisory work will be more meticulous and efficient” (People’s Daily, 2002). In a speech to leaders of business and government, the executive vice minister of the State Council leading group for inter-ministry coordination on issues of information and communication technology, Qu Weizhi, said in 2002: “The construction of e-government is an objective need for accelerating the transformation of government functions; is also helpful to...raise the level of a hardworking and honest government and to strengthen the macro control” (Seifert and Chung, 2009). In short, counties put content onto government websites because they are required to do so by central regulations. However, it is general knowledge that websites are intended to help upper levels of government monitor lower level officials, and presumably sanction 8
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Page 33: Papers. New York: Public Affairs. 3

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