When drought hit again this winter, Dorji, an ethnic Mongolian shepherd living in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, worried about the fate of his 70 lambs.

"I may be short of feed in the spring. The grass is not growing and more than half of my income has gone on buying feed," said the 36-year-old who has about 270 sheep.

Like many farmers in the area, Dorji looked forward to receiving government help.

"I don't know who I should talk to about this," he said. "I hear of deputies of the people's congress, but do not know one or even how to find one."

Deputies of the people's congresses, at the local and national level, are elected to represent Chinese citizens in political affairs at the local and state levels.

Chaolumeng is a deputy of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, and a full-time party chief of a village in the Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia.

Although they both live in Siziwang Banner, Chaolumeng and Dorji do not know each other as their villages are far apart.

"There are not enough deputies from the lowest level in rural areas," Chaolumeng said. "We need more people from the countryside so that more farmers and shepherds' voices can be heard."

What Chaolumeng has suggested might become reality at the coming annual session of the NPC. An amendment draft to the Electoral Law will be reviewed for the third time and is very much likely to be passed.

The current Electoral Law, first enacted in 1953 and amended several times, stipulates that each rural deputy to the people's congress, at any level, is to represent a population four times that of an urban deputy.

If the amendment draft is passed at the coming session, a rural deputy would represent the same population as their urban counterpart, which would give rural residents more say.

Wang Junying, a professor of law with the Party School of Henan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), told Xinhua, "Unequal representation of the rural and urban populations in the legislature was based on the reality of the time. But now reality has changed."

The rural population made up almost 90 percent of the country's total when New China was founded in 1949. Now though the ratio of urban and rural residents has dramatically changed, being about 45 to 53 in 2008.

"In the past decades, farmers' awareness of their rights and interests has improved a lot. And people living in rural areas are not necessarily farmers. As the economy boomed, the population of migrant workers, businesspeople, and the self-employed increased. Different interest groups need representatives to voice their concerns," Wang said.

Living in villages where communication and transport are not as good as cities, rural residents, like Dorji, face other problems in expressing their opinions. Sometimes in the past, the lack of smooth channels for people to voice their complaints has led to social frictions.

The government has taken steps to solve this problem, for instance, regularly sending officials to visit people in rural areas and talk with rural dwellers about the problems they face.

"As an integral part of the country's political system, people's congresses should be a major platform for people to express their opinions and defend their interests," Wang said.

China is trying to close the gap between the cities and the countryside, she said. "But you can not move all farmers into cities or turn all villages into towns. The most important thing is to guarantee rural and urban residents have equal rights and interests."

"The equality of political rights will lay the foundation for equality of many other rights," she said.

Trail run 

In the latest election in 2007, rural and urban residents in Sheyang county of east China's Jiangsu Province were equally represented at the people's congress of the county in a trial run.

Compared with the previous election in 2002, the total number of deputies was reduced by ten in 2007 because of population change, however the number of rural deputies increased by 18, said Yu Weihua, an official in charge of election affairs with the Standing Committee of Sheyang County People's Congress.

Rural deputies accounted for 55 percent of the total, up from 48 percent in the 2002 election.

"As more rural deputies joined, we received more motions related to agriculture development and public service for rural residents," Yu said.

At Changdang township in Sheyang, rural deputies have pushed the local government to build a new road and start a project to improve the quality of drinking water.

But, not everything has gone smoothly.

"It is not easy for us to elect deputies who can really represent farmers as many young people work in cities and no longer live in villages," Yu said.

Due to limited access to information and some deputies' lack of education, rural deputies could not always raise good motions, he added.

Prof. Wang Xuehui with the Southwest University of Political Science and Law suggested the people's congresses should provide training for rural deputies to help them better understand their work.

For instance, the deputies could join special investigation projects on issues which farmers think most important, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2010)