GUANGZHOU - Zheng Shuping, 47, spent all night preparing his "big speech" to be addressed to a committee of village representatives.

"It's a big event," said Zheng, who was elected head of Fangxin village a few months ago in southern Guangdong province. "I'm feeling very nervous."

The speech Zheng was working on was his first work report, a description of what he had done during the first few months of his tenure.

Although village-level elections have been in practice for about two decades in China, village governance barely had the mechanism for evaluating the performance of elected officials until last year.

The system changed in October 2010 when the national legislature revised the Organic Law of the Villagers' Committees, empowering villagers to conduct an annual "democratic review" of their leaders.

In Fangxin, a group of representatives heard the reports presented by Zheng and other village heads before casting secret ballots evaluating their performances.

Zheng was eager to get a positive review. According to the law, a village head getting a poor evaluation for two consecutive years would be automatically removed.

Sadly, Zheng did not get the highest marks. A female head beat him and others to it.

"I know these people well. We're neighbors. I can easily tell if they exaggerate their performance," one of the evaluators said.

About 2,000 residents of Fangxin, a typical farm village 500 kilometers north of the provincial capital of Guangzhou, earn a living mainly by planting rice.

The collective revenue of the village has picked up in recent years, thanks to a few small hydropower projects. Many villagers are now concerned about how this increased income is spent.

Lu Yaosheng, a county official, said: "The triennial village election is not enough to ensure appropriate budget management. We need daily supervision."

Over the past five years, Lu visited Fangxin and 96 other villages in Jiaoling county to set up village supervisory committees even before the revised national law was instituted.

At first, Lu's proposal to establish supervisory bodies was rebuffed by the local leaders.

"Village heads were not accustomed to being checked," Lu said. "Some said it would reduce efficiency. They were, in fact, afraid of losing power."

Lu's reformist idea was easily rejected then. But the law was revised last year, providing a legal basis for establishing a supervisory body.

Soon after, Lu restarted his program and organized a group of volunteers, mostly social science students, to tell villagers about supervisory committees.

Their work finally paid off, though. Villagers accepted the outsiders and began learning basic ideas about local financing and other concepts from the students. So far the supervisory committees appear to be helping improve village management.

Xu Yongzhen, chair of the supervisory committee of Fangxin, said he stopped the village head on several occasions from reimbursing people whose receipts were not in order.

"The village head was unhappy and asked me not to be so strict, but I must take responsibility on behalf of the villagers," Xu said.

Huang Kunrong, head of Guangyu, a village near Fangxin, said villagers got more difficult to manage since the supervisory committee was instituted. But he said that the new committee was a step forward, after all.

"The supervisory committee has changed both our village and myself," Huang said. Huang's village has held several supervisory meetings.

The supervisory chair was Huang's political rival, who early this year lost the village election to Huang by only 100 votes.

"He shows no mercy towards my work," Huang smiled. "I'm always put on the rack."