China completes elections at grassroots legislatures

BEIJING - China's top legislature said Tuesday that elections for new lawmakers in all county and township legislatures have been completed across the country.

Since early 2011, nearly 600,000 deputies to 2,878 county legislatures and 1.9 million deputies to 33,281 township legislatures have been elected, according to a statement issued by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

The statement also highlighted drops in the ratio of seats held by Party or government officials and a rise in the number of female deputies.