At 3:30 p.m. June 28 in the Great Hall of the People, Auditor-General of the National Audit Office Li Jinhua stepped on the rostrum, starting his annual auditing report to China's lawmakers amid national attention.

The report on the 2004 central budget performance and other issues maintained the straightforward and down-to-earth style Li's report has always had.

The one hour-long report pointed out improper budget use in governmental departments, such as the State General Administration of Sport, the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Tourism Administration, as well as in hospitals, universities and some major state-owned enterprises. Again, Li's auditing report won waves of applause from lawmakers.

Li, born in 1943 and son of a pastry cook in China's Jiangsu Province, lost his mother when he was very young and was raised by his aunts. He grew up amid warfare and was recruited by the Central Institute of Finance and Banking in 1962.

He worked in backward northwestern China after graduation until he was admitted to the postgraduate department of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee in 1983. In 1985, the then 42-year-old Li was appointed as deputy Auditor-General of the National Audit Office.

Before 1999, Li, together with the National Audit Office, was almost unknown to the public. In 1999 when Li took the office of the Auditor-General of the National Audit Office, his first report on budget performance to the national legislature shocked Chinese lawmakers and the whole nation because of its unprecedented disclosures on budget abuses in as many as 43 central governmental departments involving 3.12 billion yuan.

In June 2003, Li criticized four central governmental departments, including the General Administration of Sport, the State Forestry Bureau, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense, for severe budget embezzlement with "unprecedented hostile criticism", and revealed the embezzlement of disaster- relief funds as well as economic losses caused by the decision- making mistakes by the former China State Power Company.

His report received wide acclaim, creating huge pressure on corrupt departments.

Chinese media, therefore, started to call Li Jinhua an "iron- face auditor" and said his auditing report triggered a nationwide "auditing storm". Li described himself as a "watchdog" of state assets and said he did not want to see his annual auditing report always cause an "auditing storm". He wished for auditing results to become a regular source of feedback to the sociopolitical system.

At the end of 2004, Li Jinhua was selected by the China Central TV Station as one of the ten most influential people in economic matters in 2004. At the live awarding ceremony, Li shed tears in front of cameras.

"It is really great of him to unremittingly pursue justice even at the cost of constantly offending other officials " said Zhongwei, professor of the Beijing Normal University who was also one of members of the review committee of "CCTV's 2004 ten most influential economic people" .

"The so-called 'auditing storm' was by no means my personal intent. Our auditing work is constantly improving by taking advantage of the country's favorable environment, the essence of which should be the rule of law. If I had no support from the central authorities and the Chinese people, I could not achieve anything," Li said.

Source: Xinhua