In the rural area of the impoverished county of Binhai in east
China's Jiangsu Province, a blue roadside billboard
with a slogan painted in white catches the eye.
"Those unable to get rich won't be elected village cadres; those
incapable of leading everybody towards wealth are not good
cadres."
In rural Jiangsu the slogan is not unique. It is replacing
slogans for the one-child policy and compulsory education.
Electing or nominating educated, able people as village
officials, who will lead their fellow villagers toward a wealthy
life, is being popularized as a new management mode in 680,000
villages throughout China.
Democratic supervision to stop power abuse by powerful village
heads is becoming more widespread.
In the booming coastal regions, more than 60 percent of the
villages have elected able people village heads, while in
underdeveloped regions, peasants are pinning their hopes to such
slogans as "Choosing the right person will enable a village to
become wealthy".
"Making a person's capability of getting rich the criteria to
judge a village head is the choice of the new stage in the history
of China's rural development," said Liu Shejian, a researcher with
the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
"It is imperative for China's rural areas, home to 900 million
residents, to develop. Most farmers are poorly educated who need
educated, able people to pool scattered resources and lead them
towards wealth," Liu added.
While more and more prosperous villages have been created under
the leadership of able people, however, problems have cropped up in
some places due to the new village management pattern.
Take Wanfeng Village in Shenzhen city, south China's Guangdong Province.
Under the leadership of Pan Qiang'en, in 1984 the village became
the first to employ a joint-stock system and transform the
villagers into share holders.
In 2000, the village boasted 1.4 billion yuan (US$173 million)
in gross assets and 350 million yuan (US$43 million) in annual
sales revenue earned by more than a dozen subordinate
companies.
Though becoming a pace-setter for villages across the nation,
the village, or Wanfeng Group, made a loss of more than one billion
yuan because of rash decision-making and dysfunctional operation,
with a debt burden of 550,000 yuan (US$67,817) for each
villager.
Li Miao, a senior official with the supervisory organ of the
provincial Party committee of north China's Hebei, said, "Power that is out of control is
the most dangerous phenomenon in both urban and rural areas."
Usually, a powerful village head is authorized to allocate
various resources and act as an entrepreneur, increasing chances of
corruption. In this regard, effective supervision is required.
In western China, farmers have not only selected able people as
village heads but also voluntarily formed decision-making and
supervisory organs. At the impoverished village Songping in
southwest China's Yunnan Province, thanks to the leadership of
both village cadres and a development committee, farmers'
per-capita net income increased from 353 yuan (US$43) to 579 yuan
(US$71), and the number of poor households decreased from 236 to
118.
All the cadres at Zhongcao village in Hebei Province are in
business. After these business people were elected village cadres,
the first thing they did was to compile 15 management rules,
including a principle of transparency, democratic cadre assessment
and engineering bidding control, in a brochure and distributed it
to each family.
Professor Zhao Zelong with the Southwest University of Political
Science and Law based in Chongqing Municipality said, "In cadre
evaluation, Chinese farmers have put more emphasis on capability, a
change from emphasizing only virtues. However, it is necessary to
establish a democratic supervision mechanism and an effective legal
system to restrain village heads' power and safeguard the rights
and interests of farmers."
(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2006)