Wukan's poll - pompous and wasteful or upholding fairness?

The world's press reported Wednesday's free vote for an election committee in Wukan - the Guangdong fishing community where villagers were involved in a stand-off with the authorities for months over shady land deals - as a sign of progress.

Many Wukan residents alleged that village officials had misused their land rights since 2006 and embezzled more than 700 million yuan (HK$860 million) in public funds. From September to December, they staged petition drives and demonstrations, which turned into violent clashes with local police and reached a critical point when a protest leader died in police custody.

A dramatic turn came before Christmas, when the Guangdong provincial government adopted a conciliatory approach to the villagers, sending an investigative committee to look into their case and agreeing to restore village governance through a free election.

Wukan has also earned quite a few commentaries in the domestic press since then. Here are two examples:

An analysis in the Legal Daily in Beijing drew three major lessons from the provincial government's intervention in Wukan.

First, it said, grass-roots corruption is often the direct cause of public resentment because it happens right beside the masses. More than 30 years after the beginning of China's reform and opening up, the analysis said, there are still 'a considerable number of places and government institutions' that are ignored by the fight against official corruption.