THE Guangdong Provincial Government will pick a county and a district in the province’s northern region and the Pearl River Delta area to pilot a policy of requiring officials to disclose their assets, in a bid to minimize corruption, Guangdong’s disciplinary leader announced.

“Government officials in the county and district must tell the public about their personal assets,” Huang Xianyao, head of the Guangdong Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC, the province’s disciplinary watchdog, was quoted by the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily as saying yesterday.

Local officials should reveal family assets, including property and investments, Huang said. The pilot policy will continue through 2014 and, if successful, will be gradually implemented across the province, he added.

He also vowed to tighten supervision of officials’ illegal overseas trips and transfer of assets overseas, and emigration of officials’ family members.

The announcement followed similar measures in five other cities or regions nationwide, as part of efforts to stamp out corruption by improving oversight of the promotion system.

In January 2009, authorities in Altay Prefecture in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region publicly released a list of assets held by more than 1,000 incumbent and retired officials. The move required all county- and division-level officials in the prefecture to declare their assets once a year to improve transparency in government.

It was hailed as a forerunner of the country’s declaration system of officials’ assets.

Cixi City in Zhejiang Province, Liuyang City in Hunan Province, and Yinchuan and Qingtongxia cities in Ningxia then followed suit.

The Central Government and the Central Committee of the CPC issued two regulations — in 1995 and 2001 — requiring officials to declare their income, but those were limited to officials’ salary and subsidies, with the information unavailable to the public or the media.