Zhang Tingfu wasn't nervous or tired, even though it was almost midnight and everything seemed to be riding on the election due to start at sunrise in the eastern Chinese village of Dangxi.

"I won't sleep much,'' said the laconic 58-year-old farmer, pouring tea for guests seated on wooden stools in the living room of his brick and concrete farmhouse.

"What we are striving for is the peasants to have land to till and food to eat. That would be satisfying.''

Two years ago, Zhang was elected head of the village committee in Dangxi with more than 90 percent of the 1,600 votes cast, a clear mandate for the crusade he has led against officials who villagers say sold their land to enrich themselves.

Hopes for swift justice, however, faded as a stalemate emerged between his village committee and the local Communist Party branch highlighting the paradox of China's experiment in rural democracy - despite elections, the party is king.

So last month, after the township called another election for a new village committee, he found himself defending his position.

Zhang's story highlights the faith peasants have placed in democratic village elections, arguably China's most watched political experiment since they started more than 20 years ago.

But it also underscores the shortcomings of those elections in a system where the party has shown scant interest in relaxing its monopoly on power but faces a crisis of legitimacy.

Situated beside train tracks on the outskirts of the Shandong provincial capital, Jinan, Dangxi is a mostly Muslim village of 3,300 people, founded several hundred years ago by Silk Road traders, villagers say. Most grow corn and wheat for a living.

Fueled by the economic boom, land prices have jumped by about 40 percent in just three years as Jinan, a city of three million, has expanded and developed, people from a nearby village said.

But greed has got the best of local officials and in Dangxi, Zhang says, village leaders began selling off public land to developers in the early 1990s in the hope of striking it rich.

``Since reform and opening began, this village has lost 3,000 mu [210 hectares] of land, villagers haven't had compensation, and now the village is in debt of more than 15 million yuan [HK$14.1 million],'' he said.

Many, including Zhang, petitioned the government at various levels time and again over the years, but nothing came of it.

Then, in 1998, China's rubber-stamp parliament adopted a law on village elections allowing non-party members a shot at office.

Zhang and his friends won the village election in 2003 on a platform of economic development and justice.

Not one of the winners was a party member, highlighting a unique aspect of polls in villages - they are the only place in China where organised, overt opposition to the party is allowed.

But only to a point.

Dangxi's former village leaders, still running the local party branch and backed by the township party office, refused to cooperate after their defeat, Zhang and his friends say.

They did not turn over the village finances and made it difficult for Zhang's new village committee to get loans.

An attempt to audit village finances has stalled for three years.

``They don't care about whether the common people have food,'' said Bei Yanhe, a thin, Mao-suit clad neighbor of Zhang's in his 70s. ``They just care if they can eat until they're full.''

Such a standoff pitting the party branch against the elected committee was common, said Wang Jinhua, head of the Ministry of Civil Affairs' department of basic-level governance.

``This has been a real headache for me,'' Wang said. ``It is one of the hardest problems to solve in China's democratic environment and specific political system.''

At stake is control of village land and property, the lifeblood of rural China. In some places, like Dangxi, the party is struggling to retain power and meaning to a peasantry that is making its own economic decisions and picking its own leaders.

``I think there is a concern, particularly in the countryside, of the party becoming irrelevant,'' said Yawei Liu, associate director of the China Village Elections Project at the Carter Center in the United States.

In Dangxi, party officials have resorted to underhand tactics to stay on top, Zhang and others say.

In May 2002, Zhang was beaten up and stabbed. He says he doesn't go out alone or at night and keeps an iron rod and an axe behind his door for protection.

On December 15, when the village voted for an election body to arrange polls for a village committee, the ballot box was stolen. The village tried again, successfully, on April 28.

On a sunny election day, Zhang was up and out of his home early. Villagers again made their way down Dangxi's narrow, mud roads to the school-turned-polling place to pick a short list of eight contenders for the seven-person village committee.

But several villagers stopped by Zhang's house to say the election was turning chaotic and there was voter fraud. When the tally was in, Zhang and only one associate had made the list. The rest of the slots went to the party-backed group - a disaster for Zhang's quest for justice.

Two days later, at the formal election, only Zhang made it through - and with the least votes. The village committee he had headed up was all voted out except him.

``There was never democracy in Dangxi until we fought for it, and we did it with blood,'' he said.

``I don't favour struggle like Mao Zedong advocated, but in this case, we are going to have to struggle.''

REUTERS