The Communist Party of China (CPC) has just completed a massive campaign to improve the political and ideological work of its grassroots organizations around the country.

The campaign involved nearly 70 million Party members in over 3.5 million grassroots Party organizations. It was the Party's largest education campaign since it was set up in 1921.

More than 156,000 poorly organized grassroots Party organizations were evaluated and required to improve their work.

The 18-month campaign saw the creation of 130,000 Party organizations while 165,000 leaders were shifted to strength organizations at grassroots level, said Ouyang Song, deputy head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, on Thursday.

The central budget and the CPC Central Committee invested 1.75 billion yuan (US$21.8 billion) to help villages to build 164,000 places for carrying out Party activities.

More than 2.9 million heads of the grassroots Party organizations received intensive training on how to improve their work.

Local Party organizations and Party members have visited over 21.6 million poor people and donated money worth 13.8 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion) which assisted 40.6 million needy people.

To ensure that the education campaign has produced results, a survey, conducted since May across the country and among some central government departments, showed a satisfaction rate of over 97 percent among 6.03 million Party members and people interviewed.

(Xinhua News Agency July 13, 2006)