Today is the first anniversary of the State Council Open Government Information Regulations (OGI Regulations) and the State Environmental Protection Administration Measures on Environmental Open Information going into effect. It has without a doubt been an important year for greater transparency in China. There is still a long way to go for sure, but we've seen progress as well.

It's the May 1st holiday weekend in China and people are in the mood to relax, so for now we will just say 'happy birthday.'

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To commemorate the anniversary, NRDC teamed up with Sohu.com (one of China's largest web portals) and China Dialogue to hold a forum with some of the leading experts in China on open environmental information, entitled "Environmental Open Information, Secrets That Can't Be Disclosed?" (Chinese only).  The panel included:

• Ma Jun, one of China's leading environmentalists and creator of the well-known Water Pollution Map and Air Pollution Map.
• Professor Wang Jin, one of China's foremost environmental law scholars from Peking University Law School;
• Yan Yimin, the Shanghai lawyer who gained public renown for his open information requests regarding China's economic stimulus; and
• Hu Yuanqiong, NRDC staff attorney and open information specialist，NRDC

Qie Jianrong, the well-respected environmental journalist from The Legal Daily, moderated. I joined by video to talk about international experience in open information.

The transcript is on-line at Sohu.com here (http://green.sohu.com/): 4月论坛：环境信息公开元年 企业几乎无所作为.

NRDC has written a Year in Review article looking back at the ups and downs of this first year of (national) open information implementation.

Some of China's leading environmentalists (Yang Dongping of Friends of Nature, Sherry Liao of Global Village of Beijing and others) comment on the significance of greater government transparency in China.

These links are all to Chinese content, but we'll have more analysis and commentary on this in English next week.  For now have a terrific May 1st holiday.

Visit Greenlaw!  See NRDC's bilingual blog dedicated to discussion of China's environmental law, policy and the power of the people at http://www.greenlaw.org.cn (Chinese) and http://www.greenlaw.org.cn/enblog (English).