Beijingers elected 4,403 deputies from 18 districts and counties in the district- and county-level congress that ended on Monday.

Official election statistics show that of the 8,573,423 people who were registered to vote in the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, 96.3 per cent of them cast votes in this year's election.

Altogether, 83.2 per cent of the incoming batch of deputies was nominated by groups consisting of 10 voters of more. This signals that the grassroots will be strongly represented in the new congress.

Officials also highlighted other changes in the incoming congress.

For example, 32.3 per cent of the new district deputies are women, up 3.2 percentage points from the share of women serving during the last term.

Seventy-nine per cent of all the deputies have at least a college degree, with some of them holding advanced degrees, up 12.1 percentage points from the share of degree-holders who served in the last term.

Eighteen deputies come from other cities. This is the result of a new election rule that allows people from other cities to take part in elections in Beijing.

One official heralded the diversity of the incoming group of deputies.

"The new group of deputies is representative in terms of gender, politics and education. They will better represent the interests of all grassroots people," said a city congress official surnamed Guo.

The newly elected district-level congress will hold its first meeting by the end of next month and elect new leaders of the district governments, courts and people's procuratorate.

Meanwhile, the city's township congress also concluded on Monday.

In that election, voters elected 9,971 deputies from 181 towns and 13 suburban districts and counties for the new township congress.

Of 3,224,312 people registered to vote in that election, 95.29 per cent cast ballots, according to statistics from Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

Source: China Daily