Wang is the newly elected director of Hongguang Village Committee of Ruian city in east China's Zhejiang Province. As the new director, he has signed a contract with his fellow villagers stipulating that he will pay financial damages incurred in the event of potential mismanagement or wrongdoing on his part.

Currently, there are more than one thousand such "contract leaders" in 226 villages of Ruian City who are bound by such contracts.

This type of democratic supervision mechanism is increasingly popular in developed, rural coastal areas.

Numerous villages in Zhujiang Delta, in south China's Guangdong Province, have established special committees to supervise the implementation of the village regulations. Xiangshan County in Zhejiang has taken steps to begin decentralizing power.

Every village in the county now has its own group of auditors to supervise village accounting practices and to make periodic reports to the villagers.

The election of the committee members was initiated in 1998. In the past, the local government officials named the village leaders, however, a growing number of villages are electing their own leaders.

However, corruption sometimes mars the election process. It has become urgent to establish regulations to resolve this problem.

To date, 85 percent of villages nationwide have established a mechanism for villagers to exercise their democratic rights in decision-making. More than 90 percent of the villages in the country have made their village affairs public.

In China, new policy initiatives often commence at the grassroots level. The democratic supervision mechanism has sprung up in the countryside and has spread to communities in 26 cities nationwide.

( October 19, 2002)