If it were not for 48-year-old Li Chengli, the houses of 16 families in a village in central China's Henan Province would have been demolished to make way for a metal factory.

Li was not a member of any of the families in Xiaonan Village. But as a director of the first session of Xiaonan's "Village Affairs Oversight Committee," he and the committee members are charged with overseeing village officials' use of power -- including that concerning land-use approval, land requisition and house demolition.

"How could those residents enjoy the approaching New Year if their houses were knocked down?" Li asked rhetorically.

Li's committee voiced strong opposition to the demolish plan proposed by village officials, who said the metal factory would benefit the villagers by bringing more than 50 million yuan (7.5 million U.S. dollars) in income into the village.

"Yes, the metal plant is a good project and the village officials promised that the 16 families would be adequately compensated. But what if the villagers are not satisfied with the compensation offered? They probably would have been forcibly evicted, possibly in a violent way," Li said.

A meeting was held late last month between village officials and representatives of the villagers to decide whether the 16 houses should be demolished.

Of the 37 people at the meeting, 17 voted for the demolish plan while 16 voted against. Four abstained.

Amid the controversy, village officials decided last week to scrap the demolish plan.

"Without the oversight committee, the demolition work would have started last month," Li said.

"Village officials should not ride roughshod over villagers. They must not be allowed to do whatever they want," he said.

In China, "village officials" are the villagers working in two decision-making bodies - the Communist Party of China's Village Branch Committee and the Village Neighborhood Committee.

Li's oversight committee is a new body launched several years ago in villages in some Chinese provinces including Henan, Anhui and Zhejiang.

The main task of the oversight committee is to supervise the two village committees' exercise of power, especially their use of public funds, assets and resources.

The committee also holds the village's official seal, which means it has the power to approve or reject any disbursement of village funds.

"I supported the demolish plan for the sake of the village. I regret the oversight committee's decision but I have respect their decision," said 47-year-old Li Jinpeng, director of the Village Neighborhood Committee.

LACK OF SUPERVISION

In his fellow villagers' eyes, Li Chengli is an outspoken critic.

"He is a fault-finder. But he has a strong sense of justice and is always an advocate for ordinary villagers' interests. That is why we chose him to head the oversight committee," said 70-year-old villager Bai Benyu.

"He is like the opposition leader in Western countries," he said.

Xiaonan, with a population of 8,000, is a village close to the city of Gongyi and about 80 kilometers west of Zhengzhou, the Henan provincial capital.

It is an unusually large village. Many villagers do not know each other and its size causes some problems for village officials.

Amid rapid urbanization, some villagers in Xiaonan sold their farms and turned themselves into factory workers or businessmen to secure better-off lives.

The affluent village has more than 300 businesses of different sizes in different industries. Some are privately owned and others are village-owned. But that has given rise to village officials abusing their powers in their pursuit of illegal economic gains.

"Three of my predecessors were jailed for embezzlement and corruption," said 55-year-old Jing Heying, Xiaonan's current CPC secretary.

"The village has public assets worth more than 100 million yuan, and the village-owned businesses earn 20 million yuan every year. Inadequate supervision is the major cause of village officials' abuse of power," he said.

In the past years, petitioners from Xiaonan have crowded outside the Gongyi municipal government almost every day to file complaints about village officials' misconduct.

"We do not see petitioners outside the government office now because of the existence of the oversight committee," Li Jinpeng said.

"The new committee has indeed restricted my work and limited my powers. But on the other hand, villagers no longer distrust me," he said.

"With the committee's oversight, I am more willing to do things because everything I do follows legal procedures. My use of power is transparent," he said.

NEW APPROACH

Some 900 million of China's 1.3 billion population live in the rural areas, and there are millions of village officials.

"Village officials' performance of duty directly affects villagers' lives," said Wu Yun, a member of the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC Henan Provincial Committee. The committee supervises the provinces' oversight committees.

Still, an increasing number of village-official corruption cases in recent years has made villagers dissatisfied, threatening social stability even after the central Chinese government ordered all village committees to declare their exercises of power before the launch of the oversight committees.

"Village officials are charged with taking care of villagers' various interests. The lack of a powerful and effective supervision mechanism invariably leads to their corruption," said Xu Xilin, a research fellow with the Henan Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

"The oversight committee is a new attempt to curb corruption in the countryside and push forward grassroots democracy. Villagers themselves select all the committee members. The oversight committee is charged with strictly supervising the committees' decisions to safeguard their own and villagers' interests," he said.

To make the oversight committee "powerful and effective," its director is given the same "political status" as village CPC secretaries and directors of village neighborhood committees, Wu said.

"The three people are equal in status, ensuring the oversight committee's independence and effectiveness," she said.

To promote the supervision mechanism, China is requiring all villages to set up oversight committees or similar oversight bodies. The requirement was codified in the revised Organic Law of the Villagers' Committees of the People's Republic of China that was approved by the country's top legislature, the National People's Congress, in October.

"I myself do not want to be an elected village official. But I will not let corrupt people become village officials," said the former soldier Li Chengli.

"My motto is that I will never surrender to the village officials."