Xinhua reports that the election of secretaries of village committee sof the CPC will no longer be an internal affair of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as non-Party people have been allowed to attend CPC's grassroots election.

In past decades, secretaries of all levels of CPC committees were elected only by Party members and they were the top leaders of their administrative regions. But normally in one village, there were only dozens of Party members out of over 10,000 non-Party people.

The Organization Department of the Shandong Provincial CPC Committee says 5,384 village committees of CPC have introduced direct election in 2005. Candidates must be recommended by villagers and they need to deliver public speeches to promote themselves.

Li Jingtian, director of the Party History Research Center of the CPC Central Committee disclosed that, by now, more than 20 provinces have admitted non-Party people to CPC's grassroots election on trial.