FOR THE RECORD BOOKS: Members of the Communist Party of China in Taojia Town, southwestern Chongqing Municipality, cast ballots to elect the town's Party committee on May 27, 2011 (ZHOU HENGYI)

On May 15, 2009, Qiu Zhankai from the Bureau of Civil Affairs of Shenzhen in southern Guangdong Province became the first directly elected Party chief of a local government organization in China.

Qiu was selected after seven months of public recommendation, and the whittling down of 75 candidates to 26 finalists, who gave speeches and answered questions from the audience.

Compared with appointed officials, those winning a direct election are more self-confident, responsible and better motivated, according to Outlook Weekly, a publication of Xinhua News Agency. Reporters with the magazine made field interviews earlier this year in Jiangsu and Yunnan provinces, where Party officials at township level have been directly elected on a trial basis.

"My biggest worry for the last two years was that I could not meet my campaign promises and would be called a liar by fellow Party comrades and the masses. Now that they are all met, I am finally at ease," Yao Dan, who was elected directly as the Party secretary of Zhujie Township in Qujing City, southwestern Yunnan Province, told Outlook Weekly in August. During her election campaign, Yao pledged to bring safe drinking water to all the 9,000 residents of the township's mountainous areas. This problem was solved after an investment of 81.7 million yuan ($13 million) on water projects over the past two years.

The CPC chose Nanjing to pilot the first direct election of Party officials in an urban community in 2004. From April to June 2010, direct elections for village Party chiefs were run in 806 villages with a total population of 2.7 million in the city, where CPC committees in 363 neighborhoods in urban areas had piloted leadership elections since 2009.

Nanjing became the first Chinese city to extend the direct elections of grassroots Party officials to both urban and rural areas on a large scale.

Supervision of powers

In China's political hierarchy, county chief has long been viewed as a position of great importance. Ancient Chinese wisdom has it that "only when a county is in order, can a nation be at peace." This has proved true as county Party chiefs appear very vulnerable to corruption. In one notorious case, Li Yinkui, former Party chief of Fengqiu County in central Henan Province, was found in 2009 to have accepted 1,575 bribes worth more than 12 million yuan ($1.8 million) over a course of seven years.

A public outcry following the case led to accelerated reforms by the CPC to supervise and check the power of Party chiefs at county level.

In March 2009, three counties, Cheng'an in northern Hebei Province, Suining in Jiangsu Province and Wuhou in southwestern Sichuan Province, were chosen from China's 2,862 counties to spearhead a reform to strengthen the supervision of county-level Party authorities.

In the guidelines issued by the CPC's Central Discipline Inspection Commission and the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the reform was described as a significant measure to curb corruption.

As part of the reform, photos, resumes, mobile and office telephone numbers and job descriptions of all senior Party officials in Cheng'an County were made public. "By making Party officials' responsibilities public, residents will know who to turn to if there is a problem or complaint," Zhang Chenliang, chief of the Cheng'an County Committee of the CPC, told Xinhua.

Another reform on checking the power of county Party chiefs has been conducted in central Hubei Province. In September 2010, the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee issued a regulation that limits the power the chiefs of county Party committees in promoting officials, forbids their involvement in land auction and project bids, and authorizes the county-level discipline watchdogs to directly report possible corruption of county Party chiefs to Party committees at upper levels.

Over the past few years, a string of policies to curb the misuse of power and police the behaviors of Party officials have been issued.

In February 2010, the CPC Central Committee issued a code of ethics to ensure clean governance. The guidelines specify 52 unacceptable practices, including accepting cash or financial instruments as gifts and abusing power for personal gains.

"The release and implementation of these Party regulations have effectively promoted the Party's institutional build-up by erecting a sound monitoring system," said Hong Xianghua, an associate professor with the Party School of CPC Central Committee.

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