A majority of Chinese respondents were not satisfied with the local official's performance in honesty and discipline, showed an on-line survey hosted by a leading Chinese Communist Party newspaper.
About 76 percent of the 18,866 netizens surveyed expressed concern over the integrity of county-level Party chiefs, according to the result of the survey carried in Monday's the People's Daily.
On the question about the standard for a competent county Party chief, 85.5 percent of the 26,425 respondents said that a local Party leader should always be self-disciplined, clean and free from corruption, according to the result of the survey.
The survey, jointly carried out by the leading Party newspaper and its website people.com.cn, came shortly after a training program of county-level Party officials from Nov. 10 to 26 held at the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
According to the People's Daily report, the Party officials attending the training program agreed that discipline was a key issue and supervision over their use of power is very important.
"It is true that misuse of power by the Party head of a county will bring negative impact on both the common practice of local officials and and economic and social development there," said Tan Wenjiao, secretary of the CPC Enshi City Committee, central Hubei Province.
"As the top official of a county, self-discipline only is not enough. It is very important that we should consciously carry out the mechanisms and measures for effective supervision," said Che Guozhen, secretary of the CPC Xixiang County Committee, northwestern Shaanxi Province.
"We county Party secretaries should also be clear-minded about the importance of the rule of law," said Che.
In October, the CPC Central Committee decided to enroll all the country's 2,000 county-level Party secretaries for regular training, which is rare the Party's history. The Party chiefs attended the training in seven national-level official training bases including the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.
The training program is widely interpreted as one of the fresh moves of the Party to improve the performance of local officials amid the rise of social problems when China is pushing forward the reform.
For the first time, the local Party chiefs were extensively taught on how to deal with mass incidents, such as protests and strikes during their week-long trainings.
In several parts of the country, high-profile protests have broken out this year.
A violent protest involved 30,000 people in Weng'an county in southwestern Guizhou Province in late June, triggered by a controversial police report on the death of a teenage girl.
The authorities later admitted that it was related to public grievance long being neglected by the local government on issues like mining disputes and relocation programs.
"County officials should get used to be supervised, just like the goldfish in an aquarium. You will win people's trust once they clearly know what you are doing," said Wang Haitao, secretary of CPC committee of Shennongjia in Hubei.
(Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2008)