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Chen Shilu: Servant of the people
In Gupi Township of Suining County in east China¡¯s Jiangsu Province,
local residents call township Party head Chen Shilu ¡°a servant of
the people.¡±
¡°I seek neither official position nor wealth, but only to do solid
work for the people in earnest,¡± he often says.
On July 12, the Xinhua News Agency reporters visited Gupi Township.
¡°Our Party secretary is working at a construction site!¡± the reporters
were told by some township officers who received them at the township
offices. With their directions, the reporters found the Zhangtang
Canal Project site.
Under the scorching sun, a sweaty old peasant in a straw hat, with
mud all over him, came up to the reporters and stretched out his
huge hands.
¡°Hello, welcome here!¡±
¡°Could you tell us where Secretary Chen is?¡± we asked.
¡°Ha ha! I am the Chen Shilu you are looking for!¡± he said with
a laugh.
The reporters could hardly believe their eyes: Is this old man
dressed in peasant¡¯s clothes really Gupi Township¡¯s Party secretary
and vice chairman of the People's Political Consultative Conference
of Suining County?
Chen invited the reporters to sit down and fetched them several
bowls of plain boiled water.
¡°The excavation work for the Zhangtang Canal Project was scheduled
to be completed in one month, but we¡¯ve brought in two excavators
to finish the job 20 days in advance. With the canal, the peasants
working the fields nearby will be able to achieve stable yields
even in drought or excessive rain. Now, isn¡¯t that wonderful!¡± Chen
said and laughed to his heart's content.
Yes, this old man is really Chen Shilu.
¡°I was born into a poor family. If it hadn¡¯t been the Party, I
wouldn¡¯t have my today. I just work crazily to serve the Party and
the people,¡± he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
On January 22, 2001, Suining County¡¯s Party Committee appointed
Chen Shilu Party Secretary of Gupi Township, a place in which many
officials had found it difficult to work.
Chen got hold of a hot potato as soon as he took office. Teachers
in the local schools reported to him that they hadn¡¯t been paid
for two-and-a half months.
¡°Tomorrow will be [lunar] New Year. How will these teachers spend
it without money?¡± Chen said to himself.
Despite not having lunch, Chen got on a bus and hurried to the
county seat and then went to Gaozuo Township. In the two places
he scraped together 1.1 million yuan (US$133,066) by borrowing here,
there and everywhere. The same night, he returned to Gupi and distributed
the money to the needy teachers. After that, he immediately took
his own salary and gave it to the five poorest families in the township.
On the following New Year¡¯s Day, without stop, Chen visited over
60 impoverished families and families of revolutionary martyrs,
servicemen and old cadres. Refusing to have meals at their homes,
he just swallowed some pancakes and pickled mustard tubers with
boiled water. On the third day of the New Year, Chen began the morning
by studying the results of his interviews in the 38 villages of
Gupi Township, and, in the afternoon, convened a meeting of leaders
with the township¡¯s Party committee, government and people¡¯s congress
to discuss how to improve the township government¡¯s style of work,
lighten the peasants¡¯ financial burden and help them increase their
income.
Apart from visiting 1,000 or so peasant families during his early
days in office, Chen devised a questionnaire on 15 key local issues
of restructuring agriculture, appraising the levels of diligence
and honesty of local officials, developing the rural economy, identifying
and finding ways to deal with peasant¡¯s difficulties, discovering
and meeting their needs, and so on. He distributed the questionnaires
to 15,000 local families. The survey revealed that most villagers
thought that village-level accounts were unclear. Learning this,
Chen Shilu immediately organized four auditing teams, with their
members selected from the township¡¯s disciplinary inspection and
finance departments, to audit the 38 villages. The auditing lasted
over one month.
Jushan and Shanxi villages, with a total population of over 5,000
and with 4,500 mu (300 hectares) of cultivated land, had suffered
from severe drought for many years. In the chilly early spring,
Chen Shilu went to the two villages, and took the lead to dig canals
and build an electric pumping station. Thanks to the completion
of the project, that year saw a harvest of wheat and a per mu yield
of rice topping 500 kg for the two villages.
When he assumed the office of a major township leader, Chen Silu
set a motto for himself and his colleagues: Take a look at me! In
the three townships where Chen has worked, all the local cadres
and masses know Chen¡¯s famous five negatives: No image on TV, no
appearance in newspapers, no voice on the radio, no acceptance of
invitations to dinner and no visit to villages by car. To curb local
cadres¡¯ habit of wining and dining, Chen once told a township assembly
attended by thousands of people that anyone who reported a township
cadre¡¯s acceptance of an invitation to dine at a villager¡¯s or another
cadre¡¯s home or a restaurant would be financially rewarded. Last
year, the dining expenses for the 38 villages of Gupi Township was
zero, which is a fact affirmed by the Party secretary and magistrate
of Suining County through secret inquiries.
¡°As long as one discipline himself well, a sound social atmosphere
can be readily created,¡± Chen Shilu often says.
A local regulation of Gupi prescribes that township cadres should
ride a bike to villages to direct work and conduct inspection. Anyone
can stop a public car ridden by township cadres who are not accompanying
officials from higher authorities on an official trip to villages,
and the informant will receive a reward of between 50 (US$6.05)
and 100 yuan (US$12.1) for each offense reported. This provision
caused a drop in township expenses for vehicle maintenance by 70
percent from the year before the regulation took effect. According
to Dong Weijie, an official with the organization department of
the township¡¯s Party committee, Chen Shilu never goes to villages
by car, yet each year he travels some 9,000 kilometers on village
tours. He has never submitted an expense account for repairing his
bicycle to the township¡¯s finance department.
Chen has reimbursed numerous persons, but none of them is his family
members.
¡°If the family get some money, Lao Chen would take it to help the
poor or lend it for local projects,¡± Chen¡¯s wife said.
Before he came to Gupi, Chen worked in another township in Suining
County -- Gaozuo Township. Chen¡¯s personal furniture, which he took
to Gaozuo, hadn¡¯t increased in the slightest when he left for Gupi.
As he bid farewell to the township, Chen found that a hot &
cold water dispenser, allocated to him by the township, had been
loaded on the truck carrying his furniture. He refused it resolutely
and had it offloaded. Local people spontaneously queued up beside
the roads to see him off, according to Wang Shulou, the Party head
of the Gaozuo Township, who had been Chen¡¯s colleague for more than
ten years.
This February, Chen Shilu was elected vice chairman of the People's
Political Consultative Conference of Suining County. Hearing the
news, many residents of the Gupi Township wrote or visited Party
leaders of the county requesting to keep Chen Shilu in Gupi Township.
¡°If we have Chen Shilu, we get rich rapidly and lead peaceful lives!¡±
they said.
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