A Privacy Perspective of Open Government: Sex, Wealth and Transparency in China

Open government and freedom of information are key values in today’s democracy, rule of law and public governance. Their further development may have to be equally taken into consideration with other important public interests, such as state secret, public security and other individual rights including reputation and privacy. In particular there is the need to consider how individual privacy can be protected in the digital era in which both the concept and practice of open government may claim more territory. Taking China as an example, this chapter tries to reveal the complex, dynamic relationship between open government (transparency) and privacy protection, in particular by studying two specific privacy-related issues: the disclosure of official’s public interest-related private life and the disclosure of family asset. In the sense that they can be regarded as the benchmarks to measure the level of open government and FOI development in a community. Both can reflect the cultural and political complexities that affect such developments.