Local members of people's congress in China now commonly hold meetings to evaluate administrative and judicial officials and see whether the officials have faithfully performed their duties.
The practice began in 1986 and has spread across the country, said an official with the National People's Congress, the nation's top legislative body. The official hailed this practice as an innovation to promote grassroots democracy and step up congressional supervision of administrative and judicial organs.
According to the National People's Congress, standing committees of 69 people's congresses at county level held 640 meetings to evaluate local administrative and judicial officials between 1991 and 1994. More recent figures are not available. The priorities of such meetings were initially to examine the work that officials had done and the meetings' review was then extended to include the officials' personal capability, ethics and achievements.
(China Daily September 6, 2002)
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