How Much Toilet Paper Does the U.S. Department of Defense Use Every Year?

A couple of days ago, I was at the Hong Kong airport bookstore. There was a large bookshelf consisting of more than 40 new books, which disclosed secrets of the Chinese government, insight into policies and situations of the Chinese leaders. Glancing at a few of them, I realized that the so-called “disclosed insights,” if in the Western Hemisphere, could all be found in the government archives, available to the general public. In China, however, the “insights” become “secrets,” keeping a large number of publishers in business. During the following few days when visiting abroad, I ended up meeting with the so-called “experts,” who were full of “insight stories” regarding China’s high-level meetings involving personnel arrangements, most of which were speculation and pure nonsense. I couldn’t help but sigh over how an opaque government can create so many “experts.” Then the concept of “right to know,” mentioned by President Hu Jintao, came to mind.

In the “four rights” mentioned by President Hu, the “right to know” comes before the other three rights (the right to participate, the right to express and the right to oversee government actions). What is the “right to know,” and where does it come from?

This concept was imported from the Western liberal democratic countries. It originated in Europe and America. But don’t be mistaken — the right to know, as an important democratic principle and a civil right, was not freely given to the people by the Constitution — at least not in England, France or America.

Take America, for example. The right to know was not officially recognized by law until the ‘50s or ‘60s. But before that, the idea of the right to know always existed in the philosophy of democracy. People, as well as the media, never ceased to disclose government acts and files. People who live in a free society thought that the government elected by the people should be open and transparent. However, in reality, without a law protecting the people’s right to know, it was somewhat difficult to be truly informed about the government’s actions.

America started to legally recognize the people’s right to know when the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966 and took effect in 1967. President Lyndon Johnson, the president who signed the law, praised the law, saying that it showed that the United States “values highly the right of the people to know how their government is operating.”

The passage of this law created an entirely different situation compared to how this issue was previously handled. Before the Freedom of Information Act was passed, if you went into the government archives to ask for results of meetings or resolutions and such, the government workers would tell you, “No comment.” If you persisted, they would even throw you out, question your motives for requesting such information or even threaten you with the accusation of obstructing governmental affairs. But now with the law on your side, you can go to the government and request information openly and publicly. If the government workers ask you why you need the information, you can instead tell them, “No comment.” Even with the “no comment,” they will still have to give you the information that you ask for, because it is the law.

Therefore, if the public wants the right to know to be truly enforced, first they have to use the form of law to protect this right and use the law to regulate government behaviors. But would everything really be all right once the law is passed? Certainly not. American citizens’ right to know, especially the media’s, was not automatically protected after the Freedom of Information Act was issued. Their rights to know didn’t even expand correspondingly. What happened?

We have a saying: “You have a decision; I have countermeasures,” and that is what happened. Everybody knows that no matter how open a government is, there has to be a limitation for how much information a government can give to the public. For example, issues involving national security, trade secrets, personal privacy, personnel rules, ongoing legal investigation and so forth cannot be fully open to the public. Therefore, all of the American government departments, especially the Department of Defense and the State Department, use these exceptions to prevent the public from being thoroughly informed and make the lives of the journalists who try to access government files a living hell.

But the American media and active citizens are not willing to give up this precious right. They never beg for their rights, and they do not feel the need to be deeply thankful to their government for passing a law that is supposed to protect their right to know. The citizens of the United States know that if they do not use the law, if they do not implement the law, if they do not take the initiative to explore the boundaries of the law — thereby expanding their rights to the maximum — the law, at any time, can become a double-edged sword used by the government against its citizens. Therefore, over the past 40 years, we witnessed American citizens using the Freedom of Information Act as a platform to further explore their right to know. It was said that everything in the Department of Defense should be kept secret; then a journalist stood up and challenged the authority, demanding that the department publish how much toilet paper it purchased for the soldiers annually, how much the toilet paper cost the taxpayers and if there was a kickback in the purchase. There was no reason why information like this should be kept out of the public domain.

Imagine the public’s surprise when the Department of Defense found a reason to keep even this information secret: If you know how much toilet paper a soldier uses per day, and you know how much toilet paper the Department of Defense supplies for each military base annually, divide the two numbers, and you would know the number of soldiers deployed in a particular military base, which is top-secret, as it involves national security.

Needless to say, it met with universal ridicule by the public when the “national security” explanation appeared in the newspaper. More and more Americans (mostly journalists) came up and challenged the “national security” bottom line set by the Department of Defense and the State Department. Finally, the departments gave in. They had no choice but to be more open and transparent to the public. As a result, the public finally saw in the news that a certain faucet purchased by the Department of Defense cost as much as $1,000, and the purchase price for a toilet was $400.

The inspiration that I drew from the American federal government and its people’s movement toward the right to know is that in order to gain the trust of its citizens, the government cannot rely solely on its “benevolent policy.” It has to rely on the law. The government has to make sure that there are laws to follow, and the laws must be followed. As for the public, it is not enough that the laws exist. People have to use the laws to counter the government actions and use the laws to protect themselves.

The reason why President Hu put the right to know above the other three rights is not because it is the most important right. It is because in modern, civilized society, without the right to know, people cannot truly have their right to participate, their right to express or their right to oversee the government’s actions. How can you participate when you know nothing? How can you express freely when you are kept in the dark? How can you oversee the government’s actions when you as a citizen don’t even know what the government is doing?

Over the past few years, there have been some improvements in the Chinese government’s openness to the public regarding governmental affairs. But it is far from enough. In order to be open and transparent, the Chinese government needs to pass legislation and improve rules and regulations in this respect. Citizens should also take the initiative to urge, to promote or even to challenge the government, in order to make public administration more transparent, to prevent the government from acting in the dark and eventually to expand the people’s right to know.