The cultivation of good ethics and clean governance at the grassroots level in rural areas is imperative for the effective implementation of Party policy, a top graft buster said yesterday.

Liu Xirong, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said in a written release that certain problems are most acute in rural areas.

"Some rural officials have little sense of the law. They deal with things in an unfair way and even abuse their power for personal gain," he said.

"They (the problems) will affect the implementation of the Party's policy and threaten the stability of the grassroots regime," he said.

Liu's comments were released ahead of the Party's 17th National Congress that starts next month.

Analysts said his words are indicative of the Party's growing concern over the behavior of some of its rural officials, who represent some 750 million farmers.

"Grassroots Party committees and cadres are at the frontline of the rural economic, political and social development issues facing farmers," Liu said.

Their actions will directly affect the authority of the Party among the masses and decide the success or failure of the country's strategy to construct a "new socialist countryside", he said.

A number of cases involving officials behaving badly have been identified recently, Liu said.

Earlier this year, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, more than 1,200 cadres were punished after they were found to have occupied land belonging to local farmers, Liu said.

Also this year, in Shaanxi Province, an investigation was undertaken into dubious accounting and unreasonable expenditure of more than 11 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in some 8,000 villages.

Liu said the government will continue to crack down on any activities that harm farmers' interests, like the arbitrary collection of education fees, illicit land acquisitions or the embezzlement of special agricultural funds.

There are more than 30,000 township Party committees across the country and more than 30 million rural Party members nationwide.

(China Daily September 20, 2007)