Guangzhou police have smashed a ring of 13 village officials who are accused of corruption, bribery and involvement with gangsters. The money involved in this case is reportedly more than 100 million yuan ($15.9 million).

The alleged head of the ring is a man surnamed He, a former member of the Guangzhou Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the secretary of the Party's Committee of Hainan village in the Liwan district of the Guangdong province capital.

He allegedly took bribes and rented out the village's farmland to the briber to build unapproved construction projects; manipulated elections for village officials; misappropriated the compensation for the village's expropriated land; and hired gangsters to beat up the villager who reported his misconduct to the Liwan government.

The police launched the crackdown on July 16, and all 21 principal suspects involved had been arrested by Aug 23.

Guo Weiqing, a professor from the School of Politics and Public Administration of Sun Yat-sen University, told Southern Metropolis Daily that the number of corrupt village officials is increasing mainly because that land has become valuable.

"The officials were tempted by the huge profits they could get from manipulating the land expropriation and bids," Guo said.

He said that besides cracking down the corrupted officials, the government should improve the current mechanism for land use and elections in villages to prevent corruption.