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SCMP Reporter

An experiment to make grass-roots democracy more meaningful for villagers has been so successful in resolving conflicts in test areas in Yunfu  that it will be extended to cover 80 per cent of villages in the impoverished city.

'We want villagers to govern themselves and not have government by village cadres,' Yunfu party secretary Zheng Liping   said yesterday.

The Guangdong city  implemented its Vigorous, Democratic and Sunny Villages project in 31 villages last year after most villagers voted in favour of  a local people's congress proposal to separate executive and supervisory functions in committees.

'Ninety-four per cent of villagers voted for the document. We have not done any study of who are against it but I suspect some of them are village cadres,' Mr Zheng said. 'This year we will expand it to 600 villages, which is 80 per cent of all villages in the city. We can complete this by June.'

As to whether the project would be implemented in all villages, Mr Zheng said he was not optimistic because a precondition was that villagers had to vote for it. 'It's not a state law that we can implement.'

But it was something the Harvard-educated economist said he was 'trying to do in the drive for democratisation'.

To get village committees to accept the deal, the Yunfu government decided to allow them to nominate people to three groups set up to supervise them. One group is called the supervisory group and has responsibility to disseminate information in a timely manner. Another group convenes village meetings and the third decides on matters such as investment projects and expenses.

Mr Zheng explained the arrangement was to foster good relations between members of the organisations and the village committee but villagers still had the final say on who served on the supervisory groups.

'These are not groups that go against supervision nor do they work in collusion with village cadres. They have really solved problems,' he said.

Guangzhou activist Tang Jinling,  who helped villagers in Taishi in their abortive attempt to  recall their headman for suspected corruption, was sceptical about the project's significance for democracy in China.

'It is possible to change some things but there is no guarantee from the system,' he said. 'I am suspicious because they are doing it through the Communist Party so I wonder if it can be a good framework.'

Mr Tang said he feared the project would   fail once its leader left.



Yunfu to expand its experiment with democracy