Funds distributed by 'castes'

Officials in one village in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region are using a sort of caste system to distribute welfare and compensation funds, disrupting residents' lives, according to a recent news report.

For the past 16 years, a highly unequal distribution of government funds in Yinliuyao, a village of 1,056 people in the region's Baotou city, has gone largely unnoticed by outsiders until a report by China National Radio yesterday morning.

A village referendum in 1993 ruled that all local residents were to be divided into five classes depending on the length of their stay.