Almost 5,200 rural officials were prosecuted for job-related crimes in the first 10 months of the year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said yesterday.

Prosecutors across the country investigated 10,752 officials, including 2,600 village heads, suspected of committing crimes related to land management, construction, agriculture and forestation, it said in a press release.

Of the 5,196 people prosecuted, most were cadres from rural primary organizations, a group that accounted for 43 percent of all those investigated.

Of the others investigated, 3,181 were from township committees and 2,351 were officials of county-level and above.

Job-related crime among officials in rural areas has grown noticeably in recent years, the SPP said.

Of the cases investigated this year, crimes involving land management (24 percent) and construction (21 percent) were the most common, it said.

In the majority of cases, the crimes were committed as a result of the cadres having "little legal awareness", it said.

"Some cases were due to a lack of responsibility (among officials), some to breaches or dereliction of duty, and others to corruption," it said.

In several areas of the countryside, the management of finances is chaotic and there is a total lack of transparency, the release said.

In some instances there was a lack of proper supervision and monitoring of projects affecting farmers' interests. This led to local people filing complaints, which in turn damaged social harmony, it said.

Greater efforts must be made to educate officials in rural areas to ensure legal, clean and honest government, it said.

There are more than 840,000 primary village organizations in China, and village cadres have wide-reaching powers over the management of local affairs.

Chen Weidong, a professor of criminal law at the Renmin University of China, said: "There is a new trend of corruption moving from urban to rural areas, but there are very few mechanisms in place in the countryside to prevent malpractice.

"In many areas, officials still use age-old conventions and customs instead of proper management principles."

Rural management legislation must be improved to increase the public's involvement in the affairs of local governments, Chen said.