The central government is searching for a solution to the protests that have rocked parts of rural China in recent years, a senior member of the Communist Party of China said in Beijing yesterday.

"Although these incidents have occurred in only a few rural villages, the Communist Party of China and the government have attached close importance to this issue and are looking for ways to tackle the problem," said Ouyang Song, deputy director of the Organization Department of the CPC's Central Committee.

Ouyang noted that China's growing economic prosperity "is a golden time for development as well as a time of conflict."

The nation reported 87,000 public order disturbances last year, up 6.6 percent from the previous year, but Ouyang said that rural protests accounted for only a small proportion of the total.

The causes of the incidents were "very complicated," he said, without elaboration.

Ouyang indicated that an ongoing drive to ensure high character among CPC members in rural China has helped reduce the number of protests.

The campaign, launched last November, is scheduled to end in June. It has covered 645,000 rural Party organizations so far, involving 19.23 million CPC members in China's countryside.

Ouyang said there are hardships with operational funding for township and village-level governments and grassroots organizations.

In response, the Party is pouring 1.75 billion yuan into building new offices in 100,000 villages and initiating pilot reforms to make local Party elections more open, Ouyang said.

He said the Party cadres will be assessed on how they implement a plan for balanced urban-rural development.

He said the Party will grade officials on how they apply a "scientific outlook on development" to create a "new socialist countryside" in which China's 750 million farmers enjoy improved services and incomes.

By the end of 2005, the CPC's membership had reached 70.8 million, and the number of grassroots CPC organizations across China exceeded 3.52 million.