China's village-based democracy has developed rapidly during the 30 years of reform and opening up, according to experts from the China Rural Issues Research Center.

More than 400 million farmers in 17 provinces took part in villagers' committee re-elections in 2008, said Xu Yong, director of the center at the Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei Province.

Xu said most of China's 6 million villages had held elections at least seven times by the end of last year, while more than 98 percent had drawn up self-governance memorandums and township agreements, and more than 90 percent were making village affairs public.

Tang Ming, a professor at the center who served as an election observer in Hubei, said the polls, held every three years, had become a regular part of rural life. Democratic elections, the publicizing of village affairs and democratic management of administrative power through public scrutiny had become countryside trends, he said.

Xu explained that since the 1998 implementation of the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the government had taken vigorous measures to promote village democracy.

In 2007, the report of the 17th National Congress of the CPC established grassroots autonomy as one of the four institutions of the socialist democratic polity.

However, problems persisted in village-based democracy, such as illegal election practices, Xu said, while bribery and violence also occurred.

Tang said that the root of these problems lay in lagging rural development and urban-rural disparities.

(Xinhua News Agency April 3, 2009)