Guangzhou to Expand Direct Vote of Village Committees

China News Digest, 29 March 2002

[CND, 03/29/02] Residents of all 1180 villages in the suburban area of Guangzhou will be able to vote in their village committee members next month, compared to 70 percent of villages allowed direct election by the government in 1999 Thursday, quoting the Guangzhou Daily report.

The report said that the Communist Party would also allow party members and non-party residents to recommend candidates to village branches of the party, although power of selecting the final list of candidates remains within the township party committee.

LI Fan, director of the Beijing-based World and China Institute and a former central Government adviser on rural election issues, said that public consultation for party positions is new. But the reform is only significant if the public's recommendations are followed, he added.

Village committees are the grass-root level government in the mainland. According to the mainland's 1998 Village Committee Organizational Law, village committees are responsible for economic affairs and civil governance. However, village committees are traditionally overrun by village party branches, which represent the Communist Party.

Liang Guoping, the elected village committee head of Red Star Village in western Guangzhou, spent almost all of his first three-year term fighting with the party secretary in order to reclaim power over economic affairs. Guangdong Television reported that Mr. Liang was able to regained full power only after the party secretary was transferred to another post.

Guangzhou has also experimented reform in urban areas with elections held this year for neighborhood committees that govern districts of about 5,000 people.

An observer at the election in Tianhe district in January praised the voting procedures. However, he noted the Communist Party's reluctance to surrender control over election results. The district's party secretary got the largest number of votes. (LIU Weiming)