Following internal elections for officials by last December fourteen of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the Chinese mainland had reshuffled local Party committees.

The number of deputy chiefs on local Party committees was cut from 71 to 33. This is a display of the Party's determination to improve efficiency and strengthen ruling capacity, according to the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Positions on the standing committees of local Party committees were also reduced by eight to 186 with the average age of members down by half a year to 52.7-years-old.

There are now 56 members aged below 50 and 21 aged approximately 45 in the standing committees of local Party committees and at least one woman cadre in most of the 14 provincial Party committees.

In contrast to the general efforts to streamline Party organizations posts in the discipline inspection commissions were increased by 24.6 percent.

"It will help discipline inspection sectors to perform their duties better," said an official with the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.

Local Party leadership elections, which are held every five years, have been completed at the provincial, municipal, county and township levels in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Henan, Anhui, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Hunan, Hebei, Yunnan, Guangxi, Fujian and Jiangxi.

The election of Party officials in other regions and jurisdictions will be completed by the middle of 2007.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency January 16, 2007)