Beijing’s hutong get brushed up by local Party branches

More than 400 hutong in Beijing have established temporary Communist Party of China (CPC) branches to improve the living environment, a move to welcome the upcoming 19th National Congress of the CPC.

Beijing’s Xicheng district has been setting up temporary CPC branches in its network of hutong since April this year, a move to guide more people to work on both improving the local environment and better managing the traditional Beijing alleys, the Beijing Daily reported Saturday.

It said that 411 hutong already have their own Party branches, each with seven to 40 CPC members.

Each temporary branch also has government staff, from industry, commerce and urban management departments.

Their tasks vary from cleaning up trash, coordinating residents’ use of parking lots, to bonding with residents to help them solve difficulties in their lives.

“Having a temporary Party branch solved many problems in the hutong in quick time,” Ping Chuan, head of the Huaibaishu Hutong branch told the Beijing Daily.

Ping gave the example of members of the branch discovering in just one week there was an illegally constructed shop and demolished it.

Branch members go on patrol frequently in case these problems make a comeback, said the report.

With the upcoming 19th National Congress of the CPC scheduled for mid-October, Xicheng district is making an effort to improve the district’s environment, an official from the district government was quoted by the Beijing Daily as saying.

The offiical said that the task of cleaning up the hutong cannot solely rely on one or two people who govern the alleys.

“It’s necessary to establish temporary CPC branches to deal with urgent and important tasks, because it helps to mobilize more people to get engaged in these tasks and to guarantee the operation is guided and supervised by the Party,” Yang Weidong, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, told the Global Times.