This book assesses and critiques the legal right of access to government-held information in China with a special focus on legislative history, rationales, statutory language and efficacy of the Open Government Information (OGI) Regulations enacted in 2007 by the Chinese government. The book, written by a former Chinese journalist who later became an American professor of journalism, combines thorough examination and insightful commentary on relevant statutes and court cases with in-depth interviews with Chinese legal scholars, lawyers, journalists and government officials. For anyone with an interest in China’s legal and informational systems in general and its freedom of information law in particular, the book is a must read that not only explains why China’s first freedom of information law failed so miserably when it was needed the most in a COVID-19 pandemic but also sheds light on the world’s largest and most sophisticated propaganda apparatus that controls and manipulates flow of information in and outside of China.
