Wukan village starts new leadership election

Wukan, the southern Chinese village known for recent massive protests over illegal land uses and other issues, started a voting for new village leadership on February 1, 2012.

Lin Zulian, the village's Communist Party of China (CPC) secretary.

The voting is expected to result in the selection of an independent election committee, which will supervise upcoming rounds of voting for villagers' representatives and a new village committee.

The election committee will consist of 11 villagers, who will not be permitted to run for the village committee.

Starting in September last year, complaints about land use, financing and the village election escalated to violent demonstrations by Wukan residents.

Officials from provincial work team in charge of handling the village's unrest have conceded that the major demands of the residents were reasonable and "some mistakes" were made by local officials.

They also announced that the election of the former village leaders in February of last year was invalid and new election was to be organized.

Villager Lin Zulian was then appointed as the secretary of the village's new party committee and was responsible for leading the preparation work of the re-election of the village committee.

(Contributed by Xinhua News Agency.)