Supervisory committees have been set up in 500 villages across
Wuyi County, in east China's Zhejiang Province, to monitor village affairs
and restrict the power of village cadres.
The supervisory committees, elected by representatives of the
villagers, are devoted to supervising the financial and daily
affairs of the villagers' committees and the village-level branches
of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Zhong Xiaogu, office head for Wuyi's Baiyang subdistrict, said,
"In my hometown, hundreds of millions of yuan in land-transfer
proceedings are usually brought under control of villagers'
committee and a Party branch. If they were not supervised,
corruption could occur."
According to the county's disciplinary commission, 153 law and
discipline violations were detected in Wuyi from 2000 to 2003, of
which 80 percent involved village cadres. Meanwhile, complaints
about village cadres increased at an annual rate of 40 percent, the
commission added.
Zhan Chengfu, head of the department of grassroots power and
community construction under the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said,
"Direct election has been realized in most Chinese villages, but it
is only the first step towards democracy."
On June 18, 2004, Wuyi County designated Houchen Village, where
many complaints had occurred, as the pilot village for the
permanent village-affairs supervision system. Zhan Shenan, a
43-year-old "veteran" of making complaints and drawing up
petitions, was appointed as the first head of the committee.
The committee of Houchen had one head and two members, who were
paid by the collective fund of the village.
Jin Zhongliang, vice mayor of Jinhua City and the former
magistrate of Wuyi County, said, "The supervisory committee is
still under the leadership of the Party. It only has power to
supervise activities of the villagers' committee and the Party
branch, but has no veto."
"The supervision mechanism does not go against the Party's
leadership. It is a positive attempt to enhance supervision over
grassroots organizations of the Party," said Chen Suijun, an
associate professor with the research center of agricultural
modernization and rural development under the Zhejiang University
based in the provincial capital of Hangzhou.
To keep the supervision committee clean, candidates have to be
outside the villagers' committee and the Party branch. Parents,
spouses, children or brothers and sisters of the members of the two
organs are not allowed to become supervisors.
A limited supervisory and transparency system for village
affairs has been practiced for several years in other rural areas
across China.
"The committee established in Wuyi is a permanent organ and is
able to supervise the whole process of village affairs. It is a
valuable innovation," commented Professor Shi Weimin with the
Research Institute of Politics Study under the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences based in Beijing.
The committee at Houchen Village has monitored biddings for 25
construction projects and has held a hearing on a production
facility valued at 10 million yuan (US$1.25 million). It has helped
the village save more than 900,000 yuan (US$112,500).
Some villagers said the former transparency system was simply to
make public what the villagers' committee had done. Now every
invoice and receipt are scrutinized, the villagers added.
Like Houchen, over 500 out of the 570 villages in Wuyi County
have begun to practice the supervision system. Local government
data showed that complaints in the county decreased by 32 percent
last year.
Initiated in Wuyi County, the system has been popularized in
Jinhua City, where the county is situated. Earlier this year, it
won a nomination for the Third China Local Government Innovation
Award, which was mainly sponsored by the Party School of CPC
Central Committee and Beijing University.
After making a field research on the democratic supervision in
Wuyi, Xi Jinping, secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of
CPC, said, "The new system, based on the separation of supervision
from administration, conforms to the development orientation of
grassroots democracy in China."
(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2006)