Where Should the Boundaries of the Right to Request Government Information Disclosure Be Drawn?

The open government information system is an important institutional arrangement for safeguarding citizens' right to know and advancing the building of a law-based government. It both consolidates the foundations of public trust in government and broadens the channels through which the public takes part in governance. Yet the exercise of any right has its boundaries, and the protection of the right to know is by no means without limit. For this very reason, the law must seek a delicate balance between disclosure and protection, drawing reasonable and necessary boundaries around the right to know. It is against this background that the author offers a brief analysis of those questions through the case of Yao Mouhong—a dispute over the reply to an application for government information disclosure.

I. The Facts
Between October 2018 and July 2019—a span of just nine months—Yao Mouhong filed as many as 24 applications for government information disclosure with the Yiyang Municipal Government, the Yiyang High-Tech Zone Administrative Committee and its various functional departments, all concerning compensation and resettlement for his family's land expropriation and housing demolition. Notably, one of those applications was almost identical in content to those he had submitted separately to the Yiyang Municipal Government and the Yiyang High-Tech Zone Administrative Committee on 18 June 2019, amounting in substance to a repeated demand for the same information. Faced with applications of such frequency and volume, the Yiyang High-Tech Zone Administrative Committee did not reject them outright. Instead, strictly following the procedure set out in Article 35 of the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Open Government Information, it first required Yao Mouhong to explain the reasons for the application at issue. After review, the administrative organ found the stated reasons unreasonable and issued a reply declining to process it. In the subsequent administrative reconsideration proceedings, the Yiyang Municipal Government conducted a full review and upheld that reply.

Yao Mouhong was dissatisfied with that outcome. He maintained that all 24 applications bore on his family's vital interests and were not repetitive, and that the administrative organs had never disclosed the information he sought. The case went through first and second instance, and neither court upheld his claims. Yao Mouhong ultimately applied to the Supreme People's Court for a retrial, seeking to have the appellate ruling set aside and the Hunan Provincial High People's Court directed to retry the case. After forming a collegiate bench to examine the application in accordance with law, the Supreme People's Court held that no ground for retrial had been established and ruled to dismiss the application. With that, this administrative dispute—sparked by the question of how reasonably the right to apply for government information disclosure had been exercised—was brought to a close by the Supreme People's Court's final ruling.

II. The Court's Holding
In its administrative ruling, (2020) Supreme People's Court Administrative Retrial Application No. 12946, the Supreme People's Court cited the core content of Article 35 of the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Open Government Information: where the number and frequency of an applicant's requests for government information clearly exceed a reasonable scope, the administrative organ may require the applicant to explain the reasons; and where the administrative organ considers those reasons unreasonable, it shall inform the applicant that the application will not be processed. This provision was newly added in the 2019 amendment to the Regulations, and in the explanatory notes accompanying that amendment the legislature made clear that the provision was introduced precisely to address the practice of some applicants abusing the right to apply for information and repeatedly filing large numbers of applications that tie up administrative resources.

In this case, the Supreme People's Court found that Yao Mouhong had submitted 24 applications to multiple administrative organs concerning the same expropriation compensation matter within less than a year, and that the number and frequency of those applications objectively and clearly exceeded a reasonable scope. In particular, the application at issue overlapped substantially in content with one filed less than a month earlier—sufficient to show that his purpose was not to obtain new information, but to repeatedly consume administrative resources under the guise of "applications." The Supreme People's Court further held that the Yiyang High-Tech Zone Administrative Committee had, after requiring reasons to be given, found those reasons unreasonable and informed the applicant that the application would not be processed, and that the entire process fully complied with statutory procedure; the Yiyang Municipal Government's decision to uphold that reply on reconsideration was likewise well founded in law. Yao Mouhong's contention on retrial—that each application bore on his family's interests and none was repetitive—was not supported by the court for lack of factual and legal basis. The core value of this case lies in the fact that, through its ruling in an individual case, the Supreme People's Court further clarified the boundaries within which the right to apply for government information disclosure may be exercised, giving a clear judicial response to the long-standing problem of "abuse of rights" in practice.

III. Brief Analysis
Article 1 of the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Open Government Information states at the outset its threefold legislative purpose: to safeguard citizens' lawful access to government information, to improve the transparency of government work, and to give full play to the role of government information in serving the people's production, daily life and economic and social activities. This means that the open government information system was designed to provide an information service for citizens' productive and daily lives—not to supply a procedural tool that can be triggered repeatedly and expanded without limit. A citizen's application for government information disclosure should be made within the existing legal framework, satisfy the statutory conditions and procedures, and, above all, conform to the purpose and good faith of the legislation. Once an application departs from the fundamental purpose of obtaining information and becomes a means of applying sustained pressure on an administrative organ, it may amount to an abuse of the so-called "right to know." The Jing'an District People's Court of Shanghai expressed the same position in another similar case (the Fan case), noting that Fan had "for several years frequently applied to government departments for government information disclosure, and frequently applied for administrative reconsideration and brought administrative litigation, and had thereby lost the legitimacy and reasonableness of exercising the right to apply"—so that the action should be ruled inadmissible. This is entirely consistent with the reasoning in the Yao Mouhong case: litigation brought on the basis of an abusive exercise of the right to apply likewise lacks a legitimate basis for the exercise of the right to sue, and the court will directly rule to dismiss the action on the ground that the statutory conditions for bringing suit are not met.

As for the test for determining whether the number and frequency of applications "clearly exceed a reasonable scope," the law sets no specific numerical threshold, which leaves administrative organs and judicial authorities room to make a comprehensive assessment based on the circumstances of each case. Drawing on this case and on judicial practice, however, the following dimensions tend to be the focus of review. First, the time span and density of the applications: submitting large numbers of applications to the same or related organs within a short period is a classic marker of abuse. Second, the relatedness and repetitiveness of their content: repeatedly applying on the same matter, or filing a new application that overlaps substantially with earlier ones, often indicates that the applicant does not in fact have a genuine need for new information. Third, whether the purpose of the application is legitimate—that is, whether the applicant truly seeks the information itself or is using the application as a pretext for other ends. In contexts such as land expropriation and demolition or petitioning and complaints, for instance, applicants use information disclosure applications as a strategic means of applying sustained pressure, and this is precisely the principal situation that Article 35 of the Regulations is intended to address. As this case and the Fan case illustrate, where an application plainly amounts to an abuse of the right to apply, the court will rule to dismiss the action on the grounds that there is "no interest in litigation" and that the "statutory conditions for bringing suit are not met," and may even decline to accept the case at the filing stage.

For citizens, then, the right to apply for government information disclosure should be exercised in good faith and with reason. Before applying, it is worth setting out clearly what information one genuinely needs, and covering related content in a single complete application rather than breaking one large question into countless piecemeal applications filed again and again. Where an administrative organ has already replied on the matter, the existing reply should first be read carefully to see whether it has addressed the applicant's core concerns; only if there are genuine omissions or deficiencies should a targeted supplementary application follow, rather than simple repetition. At the same time, citizens should appreciate that administrative organs must meet information demands from every quarter of society in the course of their day-to-day operations, and should allow them reasonable time to process and reply. Rationality and restraint in exercising a right are, in fact, the best way to safeguard the system itself. For administrative organs, where an application plainly exceeds a reasonable scope, the statutory steps must be followed strictly: first, require the applicant to explain the reasons—a mandatory preliminary step that cannot be skipped; then review and assess the reasonableness of those reasons; and finally decide whether to process the application and notify the applicant in accordance with law. None of these procedural steps may be omitted, because once the matter enters administrative reconsideration or administrative litigation, these procedural records will become the key evidence by which the administrative organ proves the lawfulness of its own conduct.

Applying for government information disclosure is a statutory right of citizens and a cornerstone institution for building a transparent and law-based government. The signal conveyed by the Supreme People's Court's ruling in the Yao Mouhong case is clear: rights deserve respect and protection, but that does not mean they may be abused without limit. Between public interest and individual rights, between administrative efficiency and the protection of the right to know, the judiciary is drawing an increasingly clear boundary. For every citizen, exercising rights rationally and in good faith is, in the end, the most effective way to vindicate them.