Reflecting on Cheng'an's pioneering work over the past 18 months, Zhang Chenliang says a major challenge was to clarify the rights and duties of each Party official and to standardize decision-making procedures.

The Cheng'an County authority has streamlined its daily governance into 345 categories, says Zhang. The decision-making power for each category has been clearly defined, with 185 going to the committee's standing committee, 110 to the committee's discipline inspection commission and other departments and the rest going to the full committee.

"The key is to make sure each department of the county's Party Committee has a clear idea what it is responsible for," says Zhang. By making their responsibilities public, residents will know who to turn to if there is a problem or complaint."

Balancing power

As the momentum of reform spreads, more provinces are moving to increase transparency.

"Power of CPC county committees is an issue of great public concern," said Zhou Bin, an official with the Organization Department of the CPC's Henan Provincial Committee. Zhou said local authorities must pressure the chiefs of CPC county committees to implement the guideline.

"It is of great significance to root out corruption at source," Zhou said.

"Judging from the work of existing pilot counties, I think the reform awareness and capability of a county's top leader will play an essential role," says Dong Tianming, deputy head of the office for open government of Henan Province.

Experiments are underway. Central China's Hubei, for instance, issued in September a regulation that limits the right of the chiefs of county committees to nominate officials and authorizes county discipline commissions to directly report to Party committees at upper levels.

Ren Jianming, director of the Anti-Corruption Research Center of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, doubts the viability of the regulation as, in reality, the discipline watchdogs at county level remain subordinate to those they are supposed to supervise.

Although there is no ready-made solution, Dai Yanjun, vice director of the Party Building Department of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, says the target is to facilitate intra-Party democracy through which decision-making, executive and supervising powers balance each other.

"China cannot copy another country's power pattern," says Dai. "We should explore our own way of reform within the Party's basic mechanisms, step by step."