98 pct Chinese villages carry out democratic elections: official

BEIJING, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Democratic elections have been carried out in almost all Chinese villages to ensure self governance at the grass-roots level, an official said Wednesday.

There are a total of 589,000 village committees across the country and about 98 percent have been formed through direct elections, said Vice Minister of Civil Affairs Jiang Li.

Most of Chinese provinces have carried out eight to nine rounds of village committee elections and more than 95 percent of farmers have participated in them, Jiang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing annual parliamentary session.

About 600 million Chinese farmers are expected to participate in the latest round of village committee elections, which started in 2011 and will end this year, Jiang said.

Jiang said the predicament in Wukan village of south China's Guangdong Province is related to economic interests of villagers and it takes time and effort from both the village committee members and the villagers to solve the problem.

In September 2011 residents in Wukan staged three large-scale rallies over a period of four months to protest what they alleged illegal land grabs, corruption and violations of financing and election rules among officials.

A new Wukan village committee was founded in early 2012 after democratic elections.