Future national audits will focus more on "performance auditing" rather than scrutinizing the law and trying to expose rule violations, a top official said.

In an online interview yesterday on the website gov.cn, Li Jinhua, auditor-general of the National Audit Office (NAO), the country's public finance monitor, said that besides focusing on how and where the often huge government budget is spent, the job of the NAO should gradually be shifted towards how "well" the money is spent.

Li, who is widely hailed by the media as "iron face" for the pragmatic but down-to-earth NAO reports that usually expose the problems of the other parallel departments of the State Council, said he would give himself a mark of 70 for his job performance.?

"Judging from the current legal system and the status quo of our country, I just passed the line, but did not reach excellence," he said.

Li said that much still needed to be done for China's audit work to catch up with developed countries.

"Like large-scale projects, which usually cost multi-billions, such as the Three Gorges project, the South-to-North water diversion project, what is their benefit after the money was poured in? That is what audit work should focus on in the future," he said.

In response to a question over who should be held responsible for the huge financial discrepancies found in each of the NAO audit reports, Li said that he hoped the audit office would help establish an effective and scientific accountability system in the future.

An incomplete accountability system makes it hard to pin the blame on a specific entity.

"And some problems were actually caused by backward mechanisms," he said.

"In that case, even when we punish the responsible person, the problem won't be solved unless the mechanism is reformed."

Though some of the same problems are detected to repeatedly occur in many government institutions, Li remained upbeat.

"A lot of social problems are not fixed in one go," he said.

"It often needs years of constant inspection, redressing efforts or even non-stop punishments before these problems can be cracked."

Li also said that the current audit system is, on the whole, in accordance to the national status quo, and remained independent.

The constitution stipulates that the NAO, under the direct leadership of the premier, is exempt from the intervention of other departments while carrying out its audit work.

"One important feature of the system is high efficiency," Li said.

The results of an audit can be submitted directly to the premier, thus the problems are quickly redressed through the administrative power of the State Council, he said.

(China Daily July 25, 2007)