Sour note: China criticises local governments for ‘imprudent’ spending

China’s central government has publicly criticised several local authorities – including a relatively poor county in Sichuan province – for “imprudent” fiscal spending for the first time in an ongoing campaign urging officials to adopt a “correct view” of political performance.Among those named was a county in the southwestern province of Sichuan once ranked among the country’s poorest. Zhaojue county was said to have used transfer payments from higher-level governments to fund three tourism promotion songs with a combined budget of 1.49 million yuan (US$210,000).Authorities in the central province of Hubei were also cited. The region’s department of culture and tourism, along with a local arts college, jointly commissioned a promotional song costing 3 million yuan, according to information released by the General Office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and a special task force.The criticism comes amid a high-profile governance and performance appraisals campaign launched in February and set to run through July, that requires officials at the county level and above to standardise evaluation criteria for themselves and their subordinates.Citing the information released, Xinhua reported on Sunday that the local authorities and public institutions involved had failed to identify problems with the projects even after the campaign began, and continued to push ahead with procurement.“They did not properly implement the central leadership’s requirement for government bodies to tighten spending, and moved forward with the projects without adequately assessing their effectiveness,” it said.