ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the influence of a long-term democratization process on China’s capacity to accept FOI. It argues that FOI reform in China was conditional on the dynamics of incrementally upgrading openness practices associated with the democratization reform agenda. The gradual promotion of openness practices improved information flow in the restrictive Chinese information environment, thus increasing the Chinese government’s receptivity to the pull aspect of FOI. Government receptivity further increased after temporarily moving the concept of FOI away from an emphasis on media freedom, to an emphasis on information flow, including push/proactive disclosure and pull/reactive disclosure aspects of information flow. This helped abate serious concern over the incompatibility of FOI with China’s Marxist-Leninist political system.
