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 (1.25 million U.S. dollars). It has helped the village save more than 900,000 yuan (112,500 U.S. dollars).

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 practise 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)