Significant progress has been made in regulating administrative power since China's new leadership took office. The central government has issued four orders at different times to reduce the number of administrative items and delegate the power of examination and approval to lower levels.

[By Jiang Yuexin/Beijing Review]

The move aims at inspiring the enthusiasm of enterprises by freeing companies from excessive red tape and unreasonable thresholds, giving full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation.

However, China's unique and enduring political tradition has so far determined that government power is not only ubiquitous, but also hard to reduce and regulate because of lack of transparency in operational rules. In the ongoing deepening reform drive, whether power lists can be disclosed through effective legal systems and assisted by the normal supervisory mechanism will have a decisive influence on China's reform and the success of the economic and social transition.

According to the Decision of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC National Congress last November, governments at all levels must disclose their "power lists" -- the registers of their administrative approvals -- in a bid to boost transparency. Soon after, the move was piloted in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces.

Since the beginning of this year, Premier Li Keqiang has stressed on many occasions that the market will have a decisive role in the allocation of resources and all levels of government should gradually establish a mechanism for disclosing their power lists in the interests of market fair play.