Article 1    These Provisions are formulated in accordance with the Audit Law of the People's Republic of China and the Archives Law of the People's Republic of China for the purpose of strengthening management of audit archives and facilitating fulfillment of the functions of audit archives.

Article 2     The term "audit archives" mentioned herein refers to historical records of storage value kept in the forms of various written languages, graphs and audio/visual tapes which have formed directly in the course of audit or audit investigations conducted by audit institutions.

Audit archives are an important part of the state archives.

Article 3     The term "management of audit archives" mentioned herein refers to the collection, sorting out, preservation, utilization, compilation and research, summarization, expert appraisal and transfer of audit archives by audit institutions as well as their instruction for and supervision over management of audit archives by audit institutions at lower levels.

Article 4    Management of audit archives shall practice the principle of layered management under uniform leadership.  The CNAO shall take charge of nation-wide management of audit archives but shall at the same time be subject to instruction and supervision by administrative departments in charge of state archives management.  Management of audit archives in local audit institutions at various levels shall be subject to instruction and supervision by audit institutions at higher levels and administrative departments in charge of archives management.

Article 5    The CNAO and audit institutions at the level of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government shall establish their respective organizations in charge of archives management;  municipal (district) audit institutions shall establish posts for full-time archivists; county audit institutions shall establish posts for full-time or part-time archivists.

Article 6    Audit archives management organizations and archivist in audit institutions shall perform the following duties:
(1) To implement state regulations on management of audit archives and establish regulations and systems for management of audit archives within their own  institutions;
(2) To organize, instruct and supervise the organizing and filing of audit documents and materials of various departments within the audit institutions;
(3) To serve audit by carrying out successful collection, sorting out, preservation, utilization, compilation and research and summarization of audit archives in accordance with state stipulations, to perform regular expert appraisal of audit archives inventory of the concerned audit institutions and to transfer in time audit archives which should be kept by archives museums at the corresponding levels;
(4) To instruct and supervise management of audit archives by audit institutions at lower levels and to conduct planned examination and summarization of audit archives as well as relevant training and research activities.

Article 7    The establishment of audit archives shall practice the responsibility system under which whoever performs the audit shall organize the relevant audit file(s) with such organizing work coming to its conclusion at the completion of the audit and the filing thereof carried out at regular intervals.  Files shall be organized on an assignment by assignment basis according to classification of functions and unit arrangement.

Article 8    Documents and materials that shall be included in audit archives include the following:
(1) Official documents related to audit such as audit notifications, audit opinions, audit decisions, audit recommendations, correspondence concerning transfer of cases on which sanctions are to be imposed;    
(2) Audit evidences, audit working papers, audit reports and letters for soliciting the audited bodies' opinions about the audit reports;
(3) Minutes of meetings concerning audit working programs, review and finalization of audit reports and records made in examining the implementation of audit decisions;
(4) Documents and materials related to audit assignments such as requests for instructions, reports, written replies, written instructions, letters of inquiry, letters of response;
(5) Materials related to public complaints such as letters of public complaints and records of visits undertaken by the complainants concerning specific audit assignments;
(6) Other documents and materials that should be included in audit archives.

Article 9    Documents and materials excluded from audit archives shall include the following:
(1) Administrative documents and documents of integrated audit management which have no connection with specific audit assignments;
(2) Testimonial materials never used as audit evidences or never verified;
(3)  Irrelevant articles within regulations and policies used as basis for audit and other irrelevant reference materials;
(4) Drafts for documents and telegraphs without review or signature by competent leaders;
(5) Other documents and materials that shall  be excluded from audit archives.

Article 10    Audit documents and materials shall be organized into files according to assignments with one or several files set up for one assignment.  Documents and materials of several assignments are generally not allowed to be combined into one file.

Where an audit assignment spans two fiscal years, relevant file or files shall be organized in the year in which the assignment comes to its conclusion.

Article 11    Arrangement of documents and materials in audit files shall be made in the order of conclusive documents and materials followed in succession by testimonial documents and materials and source documents and materials.

Conclusive documents and materials shall be arranged by means of reversing the audit procedure and taking into consideration various degrees of importance of the concerned documents and materials.

Testimonial documents and materials shall be arranged in an order corresponding to that adopted in the audit  reports, i.e., in the sequence of audit evidence, summary audit working papers, assignment-specific audit working papers followed by audit regulations and other basis of audit.

Source documents and materials shall be arranged according to their chronological order of formation and in consideration of various degrees of importance of  such documents and materials.

Article 12    Rules of arrangement for each document or every group of documents within an audit file are as follows:
(1) Main body of the document precedes the appendices;
(2) Finalized version precedes revised versions;
(3) Written reply precedes request for instruction;
(4) Written instruction precedes reports;
(5) Important documents precede insignificant ones;
(6) Summary documents precede historical ones.

Article 13    Once an audit assignment is carried out, the individual responsible for organizing its file(s) shall timely collect documents and materials related to the assignment, and shall, at the completion of the assignment, sort out, appraise and select from the whole set of documents and materials formed so far and shall thereafter organize the file(s) according to stipulated methods and rules of file organization.   After review by the audit team leader or clerks in professional audit departments, such records shall be catalogued and bound according to relevant stipulations.

Article 14    Filing of audit archives shall adhere to the principle of regarding assignment-specific audit files as the unit of transferring such files.  Filing shall be made no later than the end of June following the year in which the concerned audit assignment comes to its conclusion.

Article 15    Appraisal of audit archives shall be conducted according to stipulations on the duration of audit archives preservation.  Such duration shall be divided, as according to various preservation values of the  assignment-specific audit files, into the three categories of permanent, long-term (16 to 50 years inclusive) and short-term (less than 15 years) files.

Article 16    With the determination of their duration of preservation, audit archives may be arranged and catalogued according to their specific yearly periods first followed by the specific organizations in charge of organizing the concerned archives or according to their specific yearly periods first followed by the specific types of audit that the assignments giving rise to the concerned archives fall into.  Methods used for arranging audit archives shall be uniform, consistent and free from random alterations.

Article 17    Levels and duration of the confidentiality of audit archives shall be determined according to the document of top level confidentiality in the file and shall be marked accordingly in conformity with relevant stipulations.

Article 18    Audit institutions shall, as according to relevant state stipulations, establish specially-designed sturdy storerooms for their archives, furnish necessary equipment, establish and perfect archives preservation systems and carry out regular examination of archives preservation so as to ensure the safety of archives.

Article 19    Audit archives shall be sufficiently utilized.  Applicable retrieval means and reference materials shall be prepared as required in order to facilitate speedy and accurate consultation and utilization of archives.

Article 20    Borrowing and reading of audit archives shall be confined in general to the audit institutions themselves.  Where it is necessary to lend audit archives to outside organizations or where production of authentications with reference to audit archives is required, review and approval thereof by relevant leaders of the audit institutions shall be obtained.

Article 21    Summarization and analysis shall be carried out timely and accurately of the recording, filing, utilization and organization of audit archives as well as of personnel engaged in audit archives within the audit institutions themselves or the concerned localities and shall thereafter be submitted according to relevant stipulations to audit institutions at higher levels and administrative departments in charge of archives management at the same levels.

Article 22    Scopes and intervals of transferring archives to various archives museums by audit institutions at various levels shall be determined according to relevant stipulations by state and local  administrative departments in charge of archives management.

Article 23  The authority to interpret these Provisions rests with the CNAO.

Article 24    These Provisions shall come into effect as of January 1, 1997.