Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng. Image from China Daily.

With the global media spotlight about to be shined on Shanghai for the Expo, local government is pledging to become more accountable to the public, curb abuses and open up its books to the media. Could this be pseudo-democratic whitewash like what we saw in the so-called "Olympic protest zones?"

(During the Beijing Olympics, the government made declarations, set up protest zones and followed up by denying anyone and everyone the right to protest.)

In a public pledge yesterday, Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng vowed to build a more "credible and transparent administration" after a recent scandal involving the abuse of legislation and fines against so-called "black" taxis (unlicensed taxis), frequently involving spurious charges and a rather opaque system of recording how collected fine moneys were spent.

The abuses got so bad that in one instance, 19-year-old Sun Zhongjie cut his finger off in protest at police entrapment after he was arrested for giving a man with severe abdominal pains a free ride to the hospital.

China Daily quoted Zheng as saying:

     "We must face public concerns and media inquiries over our inadequacies, and take the initiative to improve through effective and practical measures in order to build a just and corruption-free government,"

Zheng went on further to say that "the government would publicize information directly related to the interests of the people and standardize administrative enforcement by defining enforcement bodies, improving accountability systems and disclosing administrative penalties."

The idea is to "decouple" government revenues from expenditures, essentially, making sure that what one department collects isn't that department's to spend, and to open financial books to public scrutiny so that the media, or any interested whistleblower, can, well, you know, make a public whistling sound about something that don't look right.

Could it be that this push towards better governance improves both Shanghai's global image, as well as the lives of its inhabitants? As with the Olympics, only time will tell whether this is a genuine exercise in transparency, or another club-fisted attempt at public-relations-finessing gone wrong.

More Shanghai Expo 2010-related content on Chinatravel.net:

Cutting edge Australian art at Expo

Top 15 pickpocket hotspots to look out for while visiting Shanghai

Cirque du Soleil's plans for Expo 2010

Mmmmm, Peruvian cuisine at Shanghai Expo