FACE TO FACE: Qin Jun, Vice Mayor of Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, takes questions from local residents in a live TV show on June 26 (CFP)

Compared to netizens, the live audience seems to be friendlier. This has caused suspicion.

According to He, the producer, all the spectators were selected from those who applied for the TV show through telephone calls or e-mails.

"We do not invite pro-government spectators, and their attitudes toward government performance are based on their own views. We did not have limits on the questions they could ask, but our director had to know what kind of questions might be asked in advance," He said.

Follow-ups and future

Wuhan's official Q&A show has drawn attention elsewhere. Local and municipal governments in Hunan, Hubei, Henan and Hainan provinces followed suit and produced their own TV shows putting officials on the spot.

Yuan Hua, Deputy Party Secretary of Chuzhou City in east China's Anhui Province, experienced his trial by fire concerning his role as a director of a 100-billion-yuan ($15.87 billion) industrial development project. Yuan faced sharp questions concerning how the government intended to relocate the 1,400 households displaced by the project, what it would do to prevent corruption, and whether the project would benefit the people.

"This requires us to better carry out our work, to have a thorough understanding of problems, and to think maturely about solutions to those problems," Yuan said. "Facing the public directly prohibits even a scrap of negligence."

Yuan revealed a timetable for the project and how it was being supervised during the show.

An Guoling, an official with the local government of Chuzhou, explained that the city holds two kinds of TV shows for officials—heads of local government institutions would report their work and receive public evaluation on TV at the end of every year, and interviews on the progress of major projects and government work in the city.

"As for the questions that cannot be answered during the show, officials have to give written replies within a specified time range and report the solutions to the municipal government," An said.

Hu Zhaozhou, former Vice Chairman of the Wuhan Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the local advisory body, effusively praised such live shows on his micro-blog.

"The live inquiry of officials represents forms of democracy, supervision and communication. It will improve government work," Hu said. "The public raises questions for the government, and under their supervision and surveillance, some difficult problems that require coordination between departments are solved."

Zhang Xin, a professor at the Beijing-based Renmin University of China, was more subdued regarding the shows' prospects. "Government work has a legal process, and the government should follow that process. Of course, any new methods of doing this should be considered," he told Beijing-published Global Times newspaper.

"We have laws and regulations for officials to follow as they go about their work. If the TV shows are just hype, it's not a real long-term solution," Zhang added. However, some also warn that besides TV shows, governments should focus on establishing mechanisms to enhance public supervision, such as to report government work to the public on a regular basis, and handle problems that come to light during the shows strictly according to the law. During the live show in Wuhan, some officials expressed their resolve to immediately deal with the problems that had been exposed. This raised the question as to why they were being dealt with after the issue was brought to public attention, instead of during the course of their daily duties.

Yin Chenfang, a presenter of the live show in Wuhan, said the audiences are getting more mature in the past years. "At the very beginning, they mostly focused on which official sweat or got nervous at the show, while now they care more about how the problems get solved," Yin said. "Solving problems is the point after all."

Che Yangao, Secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, said after the July 5 show that government workers should believe in "immediate action" in the course of their daily work. "We plan to hold such live shows once a week in Wuhan in the near future," Che said.

The next five-part Q&A series is scheduled for December.

Email us at: yuanyuan@bjreview.com