| 1. | Acceptance of people's petitions and investigations: | ||
| Number of petitions received in this period.... [Number is omitted from original report.] | |||
| Number of cases in which delegates were sent out to investigate.... [Number omitted.] | |||
| Number of cases in which other offices were charged to investigate.... [Number omitted.] | |||
| (Those petitions which were either outside the functionof control or false in the description of facts were remarked upon and preserved by the committees.) | |||
| 2. | Motions: | ||
| Number of impeachments moved | 121 | ||
| Number of censures moved | 149 | ||
| Number of propositions moved | 234 | ||
| 3. | Supervisions of Civil Service Examinations: | ||
| Number of Higher Examinations supervised | 2 | ||
| Number of Common Examinations supervised | 5 | ||
| Number of Special Examinations supervised | 34 | ||
| 4. | Supervisions of the relief of sufferers from natural calamities: | ||
| Total number | 5 | ||
| 5. | Inspections: [A detailed enumeration of inspections performed and results accomplished is here omitted.] | ||
| 6. | Cooperation with other offices: [The detailed summary is omitted.] | ||
THE MINISTRY OF AUDIT:
The functions of audit, as performed by the Ministry of Audit, are founded upon the Auditing Act. The old Auditing Act, however, is too tradition-bound and therefore inconvenient. The necessity of revision is especially pressing in war-time. In the spring of 1938, the Ministry prepared a draft Act and submitted it to the Legislative Yüan. The latter adopted this and published a New Auditing Act. According to the New Auditing Act, the Ministry is charged with three functions of internal checking (interior auditing), auditing (post-auditing) and supervision. These functions include:
i. Supervision of the execution of the budgets;
ii. Scrutiny of orders of receipt and payment;
iii. Scrutiny of computations and balance sheets;
iv. Control of illegal or unfaithful conduct in financial affairs.
Two merits of the New Auditing Act should be mentioned. In the first place, emphasis has been laid upon visiting auditing. For instance, the work of internal checking is not limited to the supervision of the receipts and disbursements of the State Treasury by the scrutiny and indorsement of the receiving and paying orders; but even receiving and paying vouchers of Government offices have been made ineffective, unless scrutinized and indorsed by auditors stationed in the offices by the Ministry. Owing to the vastness of the area of China, and owing also to the limited number of workers available in this line, this system is not universally applicable. Only offices in which the work of receiving and paying is especially heavy find such auditors present. As for auditing, the Government offices were formerly obliged only to submit to the Ministry accounting reports which they themselves had prepared. It is different now. The New Act ordains that auditors should be sent out periodically by the Ministry to visit the Government offices and scrutinize their books and vouchers. Or in each year, some offices should be selected to be thus scrutinized. The duties of supervision were not clearly defined, but they now include the following items: (a) the supervision of the revenue and expenditures of the offices; (b) the scrutiny of cash, bills, and bonds in the offices; (c) the supervision of the construction of buildings and of the purchase or sale of the property attached to the offices; (d) the supervision of the drawing and repayment of bonds and the destruction of bonds returned; (e) joint-administration with the financial departments of other offices; and (f) the scrutiny of other administrative affairs related to finance.
Secondly, the New Auditing Act ordains that the Ministry of Audit is directly responsible for the auditing of financial affairs of the offices of different ranks of the Central Government, while that of the local governments is under the charge of local auditing offices, subordinate to the Ministry.
[A detailed narrative of the war-time work of the ministry is omitted.]
Before the outbreak of war, the Ministry had established auditing offices in the Provinces of Kiangsu, Chekiang, Hupeh, Shensi and Honan and in the city of Shanghai, and one sub-office for the Tientsin-Pukow Railway. The office of Shanghai concurrently took charge of the auditing affairs of the Nanking-Shanghai Railway; and that of Hupeh, the affairs of the Peiping-Hankow Railway. In 1938 the offices of Hunan, Kweichow and Szechwan were established. In July 1939, a conference of auditors was held in Chungking. All auditors sent out now returned to attend it. They reported on their work, assisted the auditors in the Ministry, and discussed with them the directions of war-time auditing. In October, Mr. Lin Yün-kai, the Minister of Audit, visited Szechwan, Shensi, Kansu, and Chinghai to inspect the audit work going on in Shensi and Szechwan and at the same time to examine the local financial conditions as a step toward the extension of the auditing system.