Grads-turned-village officials assume key posts

TAIYUAN - Some 230,000 college graduates are currently serving as officials in more than one-third of China's villages and many of them are in key posts, according to a report released Monday.

Figures from the 2013 report on the development of these village officials revealed that 67,000 graduates had assumed posts in their villages' Party branches or village committees as of the end of 2012, and thousands of them were heads of these organizations.

The report was revealed at a forum on grads-turned-village officials which was jointly held by the China Association for the Promotion of Village Development, China Agricultural University, China Agriculture Press and Farmers' Daily.

It described the campaign to staff villages with college graduates, which kicked off in 2008, as "the country's key project to select and cultivate talents," praising the move for bringing advanced production technology, management concepts, market information and funding to the country's vast rural areas.

However, the report noted that the campaign is still in its initial phase when compared with over 900 million rural people in one million villages across the country.

Meanwhile, the report revealed a weak sense of responsibility and a feeling of isolation in some of these officials, calling for strengthened evaluations of their performance and beneficial policies in employment and other fields.