Election of secretary of village committee of the CPC will no longer an internal affair of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as non-Party people have been allowed to attend CPC's grassroots election.

Taking Shandong Province as example. To date, the province's 81,271 out of 81,988 village committees of the CPC have completed secretary re-election. And 91.9 percent of newly-elected secretaries were recommended by non-Party people, according to an official from the Organization Department of the Shandong Provincial CPC Committee.

In past decades, secretaries of all levels of CPC committees were elected merely by Party members and they were the top leaders of their administrative regions. But normally in one village, there were only dozens of Party members out of over 10,000 non-Party people. How could guarantee that the secretary elected by dozens of Party members could reflect the common will of all villagers?

"Especially after direct election of head of rural villages' affairs committee had been achieved in most the country's villages over recent years, the head of village affairs committee, elected by the masses, often challenged the secretary of CPC's village committee, elected by a few of Party members," said Wang Shaoxing, professor with the Shandong University.

"Therefore, allowing non-Party people to participate in CPC's grassroots election will consolidate CPC's ruling foundation," said Ding Junping, head of the public administrative college under the Wuhan University.

According to the source from the Organization Department of the Shandong Provincial CPC Committee, 5,384 village committees of CPC have introduced direct election in 2005. Candidates must be recommended by villagers and they need to deliver public speeches to promote themselves.

The election procedures were designed discreetly. Secret ballot rooms were asked to set at the election sites. Ballot counting was done at the spot and then the election results were announced immediately, said the official with the Organization Department of the Shandong Provincial CPC Committee.

The official admitted that one fifth of the secretaries of the CPC village committees in the province were changed during this year's re-election, after the non-Party people were allowed to participate in the election.

Li Jingtian, director of the Party History Research Center of the CPC Central Committee disclosed that, by now, more than 20 provinces have admitted non-Party people to CPC's grassroots election on trial.

(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2005)