China Perspective Issues
BOOK REVIEWS
Consequences of Villager Committee Elections in ChinaBetter local governance or more consolidation of state power
Villager Committee (VC) elections have recently become the jewel in China’s political crown. Not only does the Chinese leadership regularly cite village elections as a breakthrough in the Party’s attempt to bring self-governance to ordinary Chinese farmers (see box), the United States Department of State has identified them as one of the only bright spots in China’s dire human rights record. What can be said about these seemingly obscure elections that take place in the nearly 801,000 villages in China every three years as mandated by the Organic Law on Villager Committees (1)?
The debate in the West on VC elections
Scholars outside of China were initially fascinated by China’s VC elections, referring to them as a “silent revolution” or a major step towards a new kind of governance in China (2). However, more in-depth research and more detailed evaluation quickly replaced this early rosy assessment. Scholars began examining the origins and the evolution of the VC elections, and assessing the initial impact of the elections. As a result, a much more complex picture of direct democracy at the village level emerged. These scholars have presented preliminary answers to the following questions. First, what has motivated the Chinese government to undertake this seismic political endeavour? To many researchers, the introduction of VC elections was less an initiative to give farmers democratic rights than a much-needed reaction to the breakdown of state authority in the countryside as a result of the collapse of the commune system. The vacuum in local leadership and paralysis of local governance led to fierce clan rivalry, and a greater spread of local mafias, corrupt practices and extreme localism, all of which threatened the stability of China’s rural areas (3).
Second, how did the Party come to endorse such a potentially explosive issue? In his study of VC elections in 1997, Daniel Kelliher traced the difficult passage of the Provisional Organic Law on Villager Committees. He identified how advocates of village self-governance inside the Chinese government used the reasons of social stability, economic prosperity and the understanding of self-governance as a political safety valve to justify their promotion of direct democracy at the village level. To these Party reformers, village self-governance would diminish the possibility of a massive peasant rebellion such as the one in Renshou county (Sichuan) in June 1993 (4). Shi Tianjian argued in a recent article that the key to successful electoral reform lies in the ability of reformers to find a way to effectively pursue their goals. In China, these reformers are not top national leaders, but “democratically committed middle-level officials” (5). Through his analysis, he found that the VC elections were initiated by such far-sighted officials who did not want to jeopardise either their careers or their craving for reform by talking too much about democracy. There was indeed a hidden agenda.
Third, what role did the economy play in the implementation of VC elections? Kevin O’Brien, a veteran researcher of Chinese rural democracy, has argued that successful village self-governance is connected to relative wealth and the predominance of collective enterprises (6). Jean Oi suggested that this would occur given “an inverse relationship between the level of economic development and progress in the implementation of democratic village rule” (7). Amy Epstein contended that provinces with moderate economic development seem to do better in implementing village self-governance than those provinces that are in economic terms doing very well or lagging behind (8). Shi Tianjian recently put forward a very bold argument, declaring that despite the fact that economic changes have triggered political development in the countryside, rapid economic development could significantly blunt this political reorientation and consolidate an elite that refuses to allow their power to be curtailed by choice and accountability (9).
Finally, what impact are the VC elections having on the relationship between the state and the countryside? Have these elections empowered the farmers? Will these elections move beyond the village level and pose a threat to one-Party dominance in China? Susan Lawrence suggested six years ago that county and village leaders found that direct democracy at the village level made it easier to enforce national and local policies such as family planning, state procurement of grain and land distribution (10). In his tour of several model villages in Fujian, O’Brien found that VC elections have deepened the Party’s control through recruitment of non-Party VC members (11). Judy Howell cautions that observers of Chinese politics should not be deceived by the appearance that village elections are institutionalising power relations. She claimed that more research is needed to determine the exact relationship between the VC and the Party and the township government (12). Scholars also suggest that at the present time there is compatibility of interests between Party leaders at the top and rural voters at the bottom. In Howell’s analysis, top Chinese leaders “have a clear interest in ensuring that grievances and dissatisfaction among rural inhabitants are expressed in containable rather than uncontrollable ways” (13). Li Liangjiang and O’Brien indicate that as villagers experience voting and find that their participation in the political process can make a difference, they will do what they can to retain and refine the new system of village governance (14).
The debate in China on VC elections
While scholars outside China tend to view the new political developments in China’s countryside alternately negatively and positively and are curious to see this new change will have a liberalising effect on progress towards much-needed political reform in China, the Chinese view of village democracy is not entirely clear to the outside world. For a better understanding of the Chinese perspective of this issue, we need to break it into three, so that we have the view among the top Chinese leadership, the view of the middle-level reformers and the view of China’s scholars.
Given the lack of transparency in China’s decision-making process, it is difficult to discern the real motivations of the Chinese leaders in initiating VC elections. Top Chinese leaders say these elections were implemented in the mid-1980s to ensure that farmers could exercise their democratic rights and participate in the decision-making process in local governance. Peng Zhen, who was instrumental in moving the historic Provisional Organic Law on Villager Committees through a hostile National People’s Congress (NPC), declared in 1987 that direct democracy in Chinese villages was extensive. He believed that a training seminar for 800 million Chinese peasants to learn how to participate in politics is a process that has no precedent in China but one through which, remnants of China’s feudalistic past will be erased along with “backward” practices (15).
At the 15th National Congress of the CPC in September 1997, Jiang Zemin repeated the argument, reaffirming that, “the most expansive practice of socialist democracy lies in increasing basic-level democracy and guaranteeing the people’s right to engage in direct democracy, manage their own affairs according to the rule of the law, and pursue happiness” (16). The VC elections are on this basis the first step towards the building of a truly democratic society in which there is genuine choice and accountability.
The NPC has hailed rural democracy as a landmark development in China’s quest for political reform with Chinese characteristics. In 1999, it called the revised Organic Law a significant step in institutionalising the four democracies (democratic election, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision). The law introduced sweeping changes in the electoral process in China’s countryside (17). In 2000, the NPC praised the first recall of a VC chair in accordance with the legal procedures stipulated by the Organic Law, and declared that the farmers had enthusiastically embraced this new rural democracy. In an interview, Ma Xianzhang, an NPC delegate and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Henan Provincial People’s Congress, said that with 900 million Chinese living in the countryside, promoting the practice of direct democracy among farmers will create momentum for China’s political reform and encourage initiative and creativity among the people in their pursuit of happiness and prosperity (18).
Chinese officials who have been implementing the Organic Law tend to highlight the pragmatic accomplishments of rural democracy rather than saying how this practice will transform China’s political system and affect the relationship between the state and the villagers. Li Baoku, Vice Minister of Civil Affairs, has used the CPC cliché to describe the process, calling village self-government the “greatest practice by which hundreds of millions of farmers can become their own masters”. As the top policy implementer with responsibility for executing the law, Li saw that national leaders were alarmed by the fundamental changes that the process would bring about. He labelled this momentous introduction of self-government at the village level as a scientific policy choice mandated by China’s current circumstances. It was a capital project for China’s “socialist political democracy”, and an inevitable necessity were economic restructuring ever to take place in rural China. Moreover, it was the most effective means to solve social problems and resolve internal contradictions in China’s countryside (19).
Bai Yihua, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) and father of the term “four democracies” said that village elections would have four long-term consequences. First, they would blaze a new trail in constructing a rural democratic political system and institutionalising the rule of law. Second, they would nurture a new generation of farmers who were aware of the parameters of democracy and the rule of the law. Third, they would provide solutions to problems that could not be solved before, such as maintaining social stability, enforcing family planning, collecting fees and building up a caring and cohesive rural community. And fourth, they would be conducive to a better rural economy and bring more wealth to the farmers (20).
Wang Zhenyao, known in the West as the builder of rural democracy, always refers to this unique self-governance as “socialist democracy”, and emphasises that VC elections can defuse discontent among farmers and head off possible local rebellions. In a series of materials on village self-governance that were widely distributed to provincial and county election officials, Wang and his colleagues described VC elections as a cure for the paralysis in governance and a guarantee of long-term social stability in the countryside (21).
Zhan Chengfu, who directly supervises all VC elections in China, made a convincing case using statistics and concrete examples. According to Zhan, rural democracy is a process that does not require a high level of education and can be managed by farmers who best understand their own interests. He disagrees with the claim that direct elections in the villages are subject to clan influence, stating that the market economy and the flow of information have already had the effect of seriously reducing the power of old family networks to a minimum. Direct elections in the countryside, Zhan argues, make it possible for farmers to adjust to the sweeping changes triggered by the country’s economic reform. They are a low-cost political operation and have the most significant of social and political impacts (22). Fan Yu, also an MCA official, calls rural democracy the “sunshine operation”, that makes the decision-making process and governance an open book for all involved to read and revise. With the gradual institutionalisation of an open administration on village affairs, corruption can be minimised at its inception. Mutual trust between ordinary farmers and their leaders can be restored, and underhand management practices in village affairs such as land leasing, distribution of birth quotas and running of village enterprises can be regularised (23).
Chinese scholars are generally in favour of VC elections, but recently a few experts have begun to challenge this consensus. Those who see the new political movement as positive and beneficial, view the VC elections and self-government as unprecedented and revolutionary. Xu Yong, a leading Chinese scholar on rural affairs, argues that village self-government helps farmers to become masters of their own destiny, opening up opportunities for them to take unlimited initiatives. Xu claims that it will be a powerful force in causing a break from old traditions and customs that facilitate authoritarian control, and as such is the starting point of China’s political reform, and also the first step in returning authority from the state to society (24). In a recent article, Xu Yong reported on two village elections in a village adopted by the Institute of Rural Issues of Central China Normal University, and drew the following conclusions. First, democratic elections are a natural and inevitable form of governance in the context of the household responsibility system in the countryside. Second, he insisted on the idea that democratic elections do not always have predictable outcomes. And despite the fact that, as a process of redistributing power resources and encouraging popular participation, the elections are strongly influenced by existing entrenched interests and traditional power structures—this conceived as a strong downside—, in the end, they can also serve as a reliable means by which a transfer of power can take place and also a mechanism for correcting mistakes (25).
Xin Qiusui, a researcher at the Anhui Academy of Social Sciences, contends that village self-governance is a natural development of the penetration of a market economy that represents the spirit of equality and competition. His belief is that village self-government will eventually emancipate the human spirit and transform China’s farmers into democratic participants in a new civil society in China (26). Zhou Xiaohong, a researcher at Nanjing University, compares village self-government to the Maoist political campaigns from 1949 to 1978, and concludes that this new form of governance represents a major retreat by the state from rural society. This retreat, according to Zhou, will make it possible for the farmers to freely pursue their own interests. As agents of their own success, Chinese villagers will be forced to undertake the long march that self-government will bring them on to actively participate in the decision-making processes of the nation’s affairs. This march will have a tremendous impact on China’s urban centres and on the state as a whole (27).
Wu Yi, a researcher in Wuhan, echoes Zhou’s conclusions and points out that democratic elections in the countryside have replaced interaction between the state and society with interaction between the local elite and the masses. The state still exercises great control however because village democracy has been imposed upon the farmers from above, but the local elites can find and do have the resources that can enable them to resist or bypass state policies in accordance with their own interests. The interaction between the local elite and the masses is now more productive and healthy because it is a process through which the agenda of the local communities is given priority (28).
Although these scholars have presented a complicated picture of the implementation of the VC elections and have identified undesirable consequences of their implementation, they all agree that these elections will engender far-reaching and positive developments in the countryside. However, a few Chinese scholars have recently begun to challenge these interpretations. An article published in one of China’s major policy study journals, Zhanlüe yu guanli (Strategies and Management) was a powerful rebuke of the theory that village elections are meaningful and heavy with the possibility of inducing sweeping changes in China’s political structure. The author, Shen Yansheng, a researcher based in China Science and Technology University in Hefei (Anhui) lists the fatal flaws of VC elections as follows:
Since the introduction of VC elections, tension has grown between the popularly elected VC members and the Party’s local branches. Furthermore, many elected villager committee members are not qualified to lead the villagers. Tension and a lack of leadership ability have toppled the core of the village leadership and caused unnecessary delays and inertia in implementing state policies.
Because of the paralysis in governance caused by village self-government, the township government has to put a tremendous amount of its resources into following through on what the village leadership was supposed to accomplish, including offering financial compensation to VC members and dispatching officials to the villages.
There is theoretical confusion among Chinese officials and scholars as to what village self-government is and whether direct VC elections can be compared to free town elections in Western political regimes.
The VC elections are not necessarily democratic. All democracies have elections but not all elections lead to a truly democratic system. Elections in small communities are most likely to be dominated by local elite and interest groups. This was the case in Taiwan, where allegedly all township elections were to be abolished. If village self-government continues in China in the present mode, it will give birth to a new gentry class, leading to a new kind of domination by a new kind of elite.
Shen concludes by saying that it is absurd and naïve to regard VC elections and village self-government as a silent democratic revolution. Evolutionary reform at the bottom can never be as effective as thorough transformation initiated at the top. Taiwan has had local self-government and grassroots elections since the 1950s, but was not recognised as a democracy until Chiang Ching-kuo and the Kuomintang introduced freedom of the press and allowed other political parties to compete for power in the late 1980s (29).
Another scholar, Dang Guoying of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also rejected the notion that village self-government is the starting point for political democracy in China. He argues that village democracy cannot survive alone in a country where other key components of democracy do not exist. Under normal conditions, according to Dang, the countryside should be the last sector where political reform will reach. Dang also claims that, like the Great Leap Forward and the communisation drive in the late 1950s, the current form of village self-government and VC elections represent a new type of rural mobilisation the consequences of which are hard to predict. Since rural political reform has to follow the normal trajectory of political democracy, the skill and leadership of Chinese political leaders will determine the final outcome of the reform (30).
In a more recent article, Dang declares that farmers are simply pawns in a mysterious political chess game. They do not represent new productivity and have no support from other sectors of Chinese society. They are helpless and easily victimised. Self-government does exist in rural China but democratic self-government does not. It is naïve to say that VC elections will lead to direct elections at the township, county, provincial or national levels. All democracies, in all countries, says Dang, began at the top and spread to the bottom. The elections were initially only for the rich and later spread to include the poor. China’s experience with VC elections is travelling a different trajectory and nobody knows where they will lead (31).
Although Shen and Dang represent the view of the minority, they have aroused the ire of many advocates of VC elections in China and have raised questions worthy of serious consideration. What will be the consequences of China’s VC elections? Will they have a major impact on China’s political reform? Is this really the beginning of a seismic political transformation or just a ploy used by the central government to strengthen its control in the countryside? It is in this context that I will try to address the central issue: are VC elections a factor of centralisation or decentralisation in China? Centralisation refers to the reach of the state, the degree of implementation of national political, economic and social policies at the bottom of the administrative structure, and the penetration of the Party’s control into grassroots Chinese rural society.
Kevin O’Brien and Shi Lianjiang wrote in their recent article, “Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China” that: “the Chinese state is not a strong, muscular state that gets whatever it wants or a weak, hollowed-out state that achieves little, but is rather made up of elements of both, and not in the mix that one might expect (32). Will the VC elections strengthen the Chinese state? Will the voiceless villagers be empowered and energised by a government that recognises their concerns as legitimate and gives them a voice in the political process? Will the VC elections generate legitimacy for the government or engender more challenges? Will rural voters become politically bold and demand participation at higher levels? These questions will be answered through an examination of the relationship between VC elections and the township government, the Party, and the villagers themselves. Only by taking a careful look at the interaction between the VC elections and the three most important actors in rural China can we find a better angle from which to assess the implication and significance of these elections.
Village elections and the township governments
Top Chinese officials such as Peng Zheng have talked about bringing democracy to the farmers and providing a testing sphere for villagers to practice self-governance. However, the VC elections and rural democracy were introduced initially to strengthen state control in the countryside, where the governance structure had crumbled with the collapse of the commune system. As it was becoming increasingly difficult to extract revenue from the farmers, the elections were put in place as a measure necessary to maintain social stability and to enforce the family planning policy. The Party’s rise to power hinged upon rural support. However, the power networks in the countryside had been obliterated by endless political campaigns since 1949. With its power base gone, a loss of stability in the countryside could have serious ramifications. When the economic and political control of the villages was gradually removed as a result of the introduction of the household responsibility system, the burden of governance fell squarely onto the shoulders of township or town governments. In response to the power vacuum and growing anarchy at the village level, a policy debate raged throughout the country, from the thousands of county governments to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
According to Cui Naifu, a former minister of the MCA, the preliminary discussion concerning drafting of the village governance law took place in 1982. The MCA first organised and dispatched people to Hebei, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces to carry out investigations. The idea of a law mandating village self-government caused fierce controversy. Many township officials pointed out that it had been difficult to lead and get things done after the introduction of the household responsibility system. They said it would be even more difficult for them if self-government were adopted at the village level. When the group reported their findings to Peng Zhen, he insisted that if the villagers did not govern themselves, the township officials would become “dictators”. The first round of the debate ended with Peng Zhen and his supporters winning under the banner of socialist democracy and rural stability. The Provisional Organic Law on Villager Committees was adopted in November 1987 (33).
The implementation of the Provisional Organic Law met tremendous resistance at the local level, particularly at the county and township or town levels. The township government is the lowest extension of China’s governmental pyramid and its leaders stand to lose the most if voters hold local officials to account. Rong Jingben, a professor at the Central Translation Bureau of Marxist and Leninist Literature, pointed out in an interview that the traditional personnel system is pressure-filled with officials at the lower levels being appointed by those at the higher levels. As a result, those who want to lead in a village have to try to please those at the township level, because their power comes from township officials. Consequently, reporting incorrect statistics, and using private and public resources to lubricate relationships through favours and bribery is rampant (34). If the villagers were to embrace the VC elections as a mechanism that would increase accountability, resistance among officials to the elections would understandably be ferocious and persistent.
A clear picture has not yet emerged of the extent of township resistance or of the means township officials have so far relied on to slow down or even stop the political process. However, looking at the Chinese media and internal reports, we can safely describe this resistance as pervasive, and summarise the ways in which they showed their resistance as:
O to forcefully argue that VC elections will only contribute to political instability in the countryside and make it harder for township officials to perform their duties;
O to vehemently declare that villagers are lowly cultural creatures who are irrational and subject to the influence of the clans or other social forces, and thus unable to make wise choices; and
O to blatantly manipulate the electoral process in order to maintain the status quo.
In an interview with Xiangzhen luntan (Tribune on Villages and Townships), a MCA journal with a circulation of nearly a million copies, both Bai Gang and Wang Zhongtian, leading scholars on Chinese grassroots democratisation, repudiated the two views widely held by the township officials. According to Bai, to say that farmers are not well equipped to engage in participatory democracy because many of them are illiterate, have little experience, often follow the wishes of the clan or concern themselves only with their economic welfare show a misunderstanding of the situation. He insisted that economic conditions or cultural background would never be used as a reason to prohibit democratisation. Wang thinks that self-government in the villages will not lead to chaos and anarchy, nor will it weaken the Party’s leadership (35).
When reporters from the Renmin ribao went to investigate the obstruction of the VC elections in Sidaoziwan township in Inner Mongolia, a deputy Party secretary explained why they were refusing to act on the villagers’ complaints saying “the conditions are not yet ripe for VC elections. The peasants do not have any moral sense and therefore cannot exercise their democratic rights correctly”. Another township official claimed that those who reported what was happening as election fraud had ulterior motives. “They are using the democratic election as a ladder to become political bosses in the villages”, he said (36). A recent article in Zhongguo qingnianbao (China Youth Daily) quoted officials in a Hebei county as saying that villagers have been “spoiled” due to the incessant advocacy by the central government of village democracy and self-government and less emphasis on the rule of law. Villagers have learned to block county initiatives such as claiming village land to establish joint-ventures either through registering complaints with higher government agencies or directly inviting the Central Television’s popular magazine Jiaodian fangtan (Focus) to investigate alleged corruption or injustice. According to the director of the General Office of this county interviewed by the journalist, the villagers in a previously “advanced, model village” have turned into “hooligans” and have caused a collapse in village governance. As a result of the lack education among the villagers officials from the county government are unwilling to work at the township level and few from the villages are willing to serve either as Party branch secretaries or villager committee chairs. They blame the villagers for being short-sighted and bent on pursing selfish, narrow and small-farmer interests, and clearly attribute these “indulgences” of the villagers to the village elections mandated by the Organic Law (37).
These arguments are powerful and it is not hard for local officials to find evidence that backs-up and promotes their points of view. But the forces at both the top and the bottom are occasionally stronger and elections are held. Officials who resent elections aim to make sure that the elections will not produce new village leaders who do not show up on their radar screens. Another, and a more effective approach is for them to turn the elections into nothing more than a ritual, a formality, indeed, the proverbial, and well-chiselled stone that can kill its target two birds in one go. These leaders can with a clear conscience report to their superiors that the people’s call for self-governance has been answered at the same time having been able to confidently place their own favourite village leaders where they want them to be.
When the NPC Standing Committee was debating about how to amend the Provisional Organic Law in 1998, the Remin ribao published an article striking for its unusual openness. It publicly aired a list of complaints against the obstruction of VC elections by township governments. According to the author, some township governments had abused their power by seriously interrupting and even obstructing the normal progress of VC elections. The interruptions and obstructions were noted to be in four areas in particular. First, some township governments refused to hold VC elections for several years, in some cases over a decade without first seeking approval from either the villages or higher government agencies. Second, they ignored the authority of the national law by appointing members their to the villager committee against the will of the villagers. Third, the township governments abused power and manipulated the outcome of elections by using election officials from township election leadership groups. Fourth, they used township Party committee and government leaders to force members of villager committees to resign from their positions before their term expired, directly violating the farmers’ right of recall (38).
Township obstruction of VC elections is deplorable and poses a huge challenge for any progress towards a deepening of democratisation in the country. However, such aggressive and intense obstructions are the clearest indication of how necessary these elections are. The township officials have refused to embrace elections because elected members of villager committees can shut down the channels they use to abuse power and challenge their legitimacy when they try to carry out their duties such as collecting taxes, fees and grain from the villagers. Some of the township officials may not be corrupt, but either do not understand the importance of the elections or are too feudalistic in their thinking to take the elections seriously. The lack of a detailed and enforceable election law has left many cracks and loopholes that officials can exploit to wage their war on democracy.
On the other hand, many township officials have begun to see the positive side of the elections, and have realised that the elections can give their constituents a good understanding of what their missions are (ming bai), and themselves a clean slate (qing bai) and a sense that they can win on their own merit. This mutual understanding and trust means the potential for sustainable power and authority, stronger legitimacy of government and real accountability. Had it not been for this new attitude towards the role of the elections, and support from officials at the township level, the new experiments in holding direct township elections in Suining city (Sichuan), Dapeng town (Shenzhen municipality) and Liyin county(Shanxi) could hardly have taken place (39).
A ramification of the introduction of the VC elections is a growing tension between village and township governments, however it is as yet too early to tell if this tension will engender political instability, the collapse of state control over rural society, or an extension of the reach of the state and the Party into the countryside. Many reform-oriented officials are well aware of the fact that the vast number of Chinese farmers have no prior experience with elections so the culture of democracy is alien to them. Making the farmers go through the electoral process and get a taste of the power of the ballot box will fundamentally change their outlook and put in place the foundations for the creation of an environment that is conducive to the holding of elections at upper levels—if the leaders have the will and courage to do this (40). From this perspective, the growing tension may not necessarily be a negative factor of the elections. It is rather the tangible manifestation of an impetus for further societal and political change towards a more accountable system of governance.
VC elections and the Party
For well over forty years the Party and the state were interchangeable and a monolith of power in China. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the early 1980s, calling for the separation of Party and government, divided them to an extent, but not as much as planned. The Party still dominates in China, including over all election matters, controlling and manipulating elections at all levels and at the head of all kinds of schemes to prevent candidates not endorsed by the Party from being elected. The Party’s response to VC elections that are supported by many Party seniors, such as Peng Zhen and Bo Yibo, has been ambiguous at best and downright hostile at worst.
Less than a year after the Provisional Organic Law took effect, students took to the streets, protesting against corruption and demanding democracy. In the wake of the 1989 crackdown, anti-village election forces gathered momentum and floated charges that Zhao Ziyang and his lieutenants were responsible for the introduction of the Organic Law. Zhao and his lieutenants were said to be in favour of bourgeois liberalisation and believed that the implementation of the Law would set China firmly on the road of “peaceful evolution”. All kinds of roadblocks were thus set up to stop the MCA from moving to enforce the Law (41).
It took the MCA a long time to convince high and middle-level Party officials that the elections would be the key to stronger state control in the countryside and could guarantee successful implementation of Party policy there. The final drive to introduce VC elections nation-wide in accordance with the Organic Law took place in 1990. Even then, resistance did not entirely disappear. Many Party officials felt that with VC elections in place, the legitimacy of the Party’s grassroots organisations would be threatened. Between October 1993 and February 1995, the Party Central Committee convened three meetings to discuss how to strengthen Party organisations at the village level. In December 1994, a circular entitled, “Suggestions on Further Rectifying Weak or Collapsed Party Branches” was issued by the Central Committee. These moves were designed to enhance the control of the Party in the countryside (42).
Provincial officials took the Central Committee’s cue and suggested that villager self-government needed to be abolished in order to better “manage” the farmers. They argued that if more rights were extended to the farmers, government authority would be weakened, making it hard to implement state policies. In this context, many new policy initiatives were introduced, including setting up appointed administrative offices at the village level and “sinking” villager committees to the level of villager small groups. Guangdong province and Guanxi province both refused to introduce VC elections at the village (production brigade) level and began to establish district administrative offices whose administrators were to be appointed by the township or town government. Hubei even proposed amending the Constitution, to define village administrative organisations as a rung of basic-level government responsible for township and town government and for village self-government to be allowed only at the villager small group or natural village levels (43). Under attack and being criticised by officials from above and below, officials from the MCA continued to push for VC elections. However, the MCA’s proposal to amend the Organic Law and to introduce a more rigorous electoral process and self-government was tabled by the Central Committee and the NPC in the mid-1990s (44).
The fast economic growth in the countryside began to stall in the late 1990s but not the burden on the farmers. Local governments began to impose new fees and taxes on the farmers even more aggressively in order to maintain their payroll. Appeals from the farmers mushroomed and instability once again raised its ugly head. This alarming new development forced Party leaders to re-evaluate village self-government. In this context, at the 15th CCP National Congress, Jiang Zeming talked about basic-level democracy and guaranteeing the people’s right to engage in direct democracy, to manage their own affairs according to the rule of law, and to pursue their happiness (45). On June 1st 1998, the State Council decided to revise the Provisional Organic Law after a ten-year trial (46). On June 11th, an internal circular on open administration of village affairs was published in all major Chinese newspapers. The circular called for the establishment of an open and transparent system of decision-making, and stressed that the will of the voters must be obeyed and respected and that no one could under any circumstances ask voters either to cast or to not cast ballots for any particular candidates. The buying of votes was to be strictly prohibited (47).
The MCA finally received the support it had been waiting for and moved its efforts to revise the Organic Law into top gear. On June 25th, Duoji Cering, minister of the MCA, held the MCA’s first ever conference, answering questions from both domestic and foreign reporters on political reforms in China’s countryside. Cering announced that there were currently 905,804 villager committees and 3,788,041 villager committee members in China (48). He also declared: “it will not be long before the democratic process in China’s rural areas moves towards full standardisation, legalisation, and democratisation. […] We not only see a tremendous number of reports focusing on the success stories of village elections, but also some timely exposure of the irregularities in village elections. I believe the reporting of both these aspects has played an important role in the process” (49).
Li Peng, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC, became a strong backer of the call for greater democracy in the countryside because of his drive to strengthen the power of the NPC. Li played a high-profile role in the revision process of the Organic Law. He gave speeches and visited places where village elections had played an important role in bringing social stability and economic growth to the villages where they had been held (50). Hu Jintao, member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo and Vice President of the state, also jumped on the democratisation bandwagon, commenting at a meeting that along with deepening rural reform and development of the rural economy, it had become increasingly urgent to promote rural democratic politics (51).
The overwhelming reaction to the publication of the draft revised Organic Law and the media blitz on the significance of rural democracy may have caused concern inside the Party about its role in the countryside. It is quite clear that the top Party leaders are still deeply divided on the issue. Attempts by the Democracy Party to register in several metropolitan cities in the Autumn of 1998 increased this concern. At a national seminar on the VC elections, Jiang Zemin made some scathing comments on China’s political reform. He said:
Instead of copying the multi-party system, separation of three powers, or two-chamber system familiar among Western countries, the reform of our political system must be based on conditions in China. In advancing socialist democracy, we have to properly deal with the relationships among three factors: leadership of the party, development of democracy, and the rule of law. Among these three factors, the leadership of the party is the crux; development of democracy is the basis; and the rule of law is the guarantee. We should never separate these three factors or allow them to be in contradiction with each other. Step by step, the reform of the political system must proceed under the leadership of the CCP. It is wrong to think that the strengthening of democracy and an emphasis on the rule of law could occur without the leadership of the Party (52).
In late September 1998, Jiang toured Eastern China, and observed village self-government models in Anhui province. He once again affirmed that “to build a new countryside with socialist characteristics the Party’s leadership has to be strengthened and improved, and the initiatives of the local Party branches fully mobilised. This is the political guarantee for the success of work in the countryside and the consolidation of basic-level power” (53).
Li Peng, in an interview with a German journalist, outlined the Chinese leadership’s vision of limited political reform. He said that the Organic Law had institutionalised village self-government, ensuring justice and democratic elections. Li denied that China would allow organised political opposition to the ruling Communist Party, proclaiming: “China promotes democracy and the rule of law. But its road does not follow the Western approach with a separation of powers, a multi-party system, and privatisation. If a political organisation “runs contrary to the stipulations of the Constitution or the basic policies of China, against the socialist market economy, national unity and independence, or against social stability, and if it is designed to negate the leadership of the Communist Party then it will not be allowed to exist” (54).
Before the end of the year, Jiang Zemin gave yet another speech, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the economic reforms. He declared that China would insist on socialist democratic politics with Chinese characteristics. Any attempt to weaken the unique political system of a people’s democratic dictatorship supported by the alliance of workers and peasants “will affect national sovereignty, ethnic unity, social stability and economic development”. Jiang went on to say that, “the leadership of the CCP is responsible for leading and supporting Chinese people in mastering and exercising the power to govern the state, practice democratic election, carry out democratic decision-making, and demand democratic management and supervision. The CCP must also guarantee the people their rights and freedoms in accordance with the law, and respect and defend human rights” (55).
The Party’s most detrimental act towards the VC elections was the addition of the current Article 3 into the Organic Law, mandating the core role of local Party organisations (Party branches) in the countryside. The exact context in which this article was added is not known since it was not included in the draft of the law that was made public in all major Chinese newspapers in June 1998. It is believed that the Central Organisation Department insisted that this article be inserted against many objections from lawmakers and MCA officials. The view of the Organisation Department was that the strength of the Party should in no way be jeopardised at the grassroots level (56). Many Chinese scholars of rural affairs and village self-government felt betrayed, claiming that this was a gross violation of the spirit of the rule of law. “China’s Constitution contains no such article”, complained a veteran scholar. There was widespread discontent in academic circles and the beginning of a doubt as to the Party’s sincerity in promoting democracy at the village level (57). When asked what they thought of the article, MCA officials said that the article was a clear declaration by the Party to its members saying that it was their responsibility and obligation to support VC elections and promote village self-government (58).
The Party is also against tentative reforms in the system of inner Party elections: a by-product of VC elections called the two-ballot system (TBS). The TBS was developed by officials in Shanxi province to subject Party members, at the time of a Party branch election, to a secret public opinion poll among all eligible voters in a village. Party members who failed to win a favourable rating of more than 50% automatically lost their candidacy for Party branch election (59). When this method began to spread from Shanxi to other provinces the Central Organisation Department made it clear that it did not favour the use of this method in the Party branch elections (60).
VC elections and villagers
In 1998, MCA officials claimed that 60% of the close to 900,000 villages had conducted competitive elections to choose their own leaders. Many Chinese scholars have challenged this optimistic estimate and have claimed that the real percentage could be as low as 5% to 10%(63). Villagers are also tired of the not always meaningful elections(64). In many places, villagers are compensated for participating in elections (65). Despite these widespread problems, villagers have embraced village elections and participated in the four democracies. This has led to conflict with the entrenched power in the countryside, particularly between village voters and township officials. In places where villagers are timid, township officials can get away with manipulating the election process. In other places, there have been clashes with serious consequences.
One incident reported by several Chinese newspapers took place in Chushijiang village in Chushijiang town, Jiangyong county (Hunan). Villager representatives complained when the town magistrate forced an elected village chair to resign and tried to install a new chair through an illegal election procedure in March 1998. A few days later, three of the representatives who had argued with the town magistrate were arrested and detained by the county Bureau of Public Security. They were released on bail, but their bail was revoked for flimsy charges. By late November the town magistrate still refused to apologise and claimed that what he had done might have been harsh, but it was still correct, because the village representatives had clearly intended to obstruct him in performing governmental work (66).
One of the most famous cases of township obstruction of village elections took place in Dalu township, Qionghai city (Hainan). On October 16th 1998, 16 Party members in Yunman village of Dalu township jointly nominated a candidate for village chair in the upcoming election. The candidate was clearly not the choice of the township government. Three days later, the Party secretary of Dalu town and the Chief of the Public Security arrived in Yunman village with three vehicles and took two nominators to the town government for interrogation. More villagers were called to testify and several detained. The villagers quickly reported the town government’s conduct to the Standing Committee of the Municipal People’s Congress and the media (67). The township officials involved in the case tried to justify their action on the grounds of the Communist Party’s Constitution, declaring that Party members were prohibited from jointly nominating candidates and were therefore guilty of creating a faction (68).
Although the first two reported incidents did not escalate into violent confrontations between the authority and the discontented villagers, there are cases in which tensions have had serious ramifications. In Leibei village, Fanjia township, Dali county (Shaanxi), villagers suspected that township officials had manipulated the village election during the ballot count. On January 11th 1999, when villagers were about to go to the county to report the fraud, over a hundred policemen surrounded them with more than 20 police vehicles. Angry and provoked, the villagers turned over six police automobiles and counter-surrounded the police (69). A similar incident took place in Xuzhou (Jiangsu) when over a hundred farmers from Fengxian county who had come to complain about the township manipulation of a village election were rounded up. They were escorted to the Fengxian county jail where more than 30 of them were allegedly tortured (70).
Shuangwang township in Weinan city (Shaanxi) worked together with old VC members in December 1998 to stop villagers in Xu village from electing new leaders. The election was announced through the closed circuit announcement system. Many villagers did not even know that the election was in process. Immediately after the announcement, three roving ballot boxes were dispatched to collect votes, each accompanied by township and villager committee officials. The officials forced voters to mark their ballots in front of them. When voters began to challenge the procedure, the results were announced, returning all incumbents to office. Villagers were angered by this brazen violation of the newly adopted Organic Law and more than 160 voters, including a 95-year-old woman, signed a petition and distributed it to the media and government agencies. Upon receiving the petition, a correspondent from Huashang daily investigated and reported the story on December 28th 1998. On January 3rd 1999, a few people, one of whom was later identified as a public security agent of the district government, broke into the house of one of the organisers of the petition, wielding pistols and knives and cursing him for reporting the election fraud to the media and higher-ups. The municipal government took immediate action and dispatched an investigating group to Xu village. An official from the municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs announced that the first election was invalid and that a new election would be held shortly (71).
As shown by these cases, many township officials are clearly in a position not only to manipulate VC elections but also to retaliate if villagers dare to challenge their action. In most cases, villagers are helpless to reverse the situation unless the media has a sympathetic ear and is willing to engage in giving them a voice. This rarely happens, because it is extremely hard for villagers to get attention from the media. The media will intervene only when the villagers try something dramatic or when the tension spirals out of control and attracts the attention of provincial or national leaders (72). Township efforts to control the electoral process has been so fierce and aggressive that there is a pervasive feeling among the villagers that elections are simply charade that is not worth taking seriously (73).
The revised Law provides villagers with a much more powerful legal weapon, although the Law itself fails to define which government agency will handle violations nor how violators are to be punished. Villagers appear to have become bolder and more aggressive in pursing justice for themselves and penalties for those who have broken the law. According to a year-end report by the Zhongguo qingnianbao, since the end of 1998 direct appeals and letters to the MCA reporting problems in VC elections and other issues involving village self-rule have shown an upward trend. In 1998, this type of appeal accounted for 17% of all appeals. During the first half of 1999, the proportion rose to 31%. Regional distribution focused mainly on provinces that held VC elections during the year. This increase in the number of appeals implies two parallel developments. On the one hand, farmers have begun to regard village elections as a “charm” that protects their personal interests and democratic rights. On the other hand, township officials continue to try to appoint village leaders, thus illegally interfering with the elections or violating regulations. In many places after a new VC was elected, the original village cadres, supported by township and town leaders, refused to hand over authority and even tried to undermine the newly elected authority. According to MCA officials, the refusal by old villager committees to transfer power to the newly elected committees is the most serious problem in village self-government (74).
Problems reported by the farmers during the first half of 1999 mainly included the following:
O Township officials or incumbent village leaders illegally delayed village elections over long periods.
O Villager committee members were nominated or appointed by the township Party committees or government.
O Party branches carried out the duties of the villager committees.
O Elections of village committees and village representatives were not carried out in accordance with the law; officials used coercion and threats; secret balloting is at times not allowed; village leaders have sometimes asked candidates to pay a deposit; township police have been incited to browbeat opponents.
O Newly elected village committees in some places were unable to carry out their duties because the ousted leaders refused to hand over the official seals and accounts. This had a serious effect on daily lives and the work of villagers.
O In a few places democratically elected village committee chairs were illegally removed from their posts (75).
The publication of this article was an attempt by the MCA to call attention to the problem of the Organic Law itself. From their perspective, any farmer should be able to go to court and sue those involved in an activity that is considered illegal under the Law. But, nowhere are the punishments for illegal activities in the area of village self-rule, such as electoral bribery, manipulation, sabotage, fake ballot counts, the removal of newly elected cadres and so on, clearly stipulated.
China’s electoral law, civil law, civil procedural law, criminal law, criminal procedural law, administrative procedural law, or administrative review law specifies punishments for violations of the Organic Law, so the courts cannot accept this type of litigation. Governments and authorities will not accept these cases for administrative review for the same reason. Village-level democracy is thus excluded from China’s judicial practice. In the words of MCA officials, “farmers whose democratic rights are violated can only adopt the traditional method, namely to go from the village to the township, then to the county, the municipality and finally the central government” (76).
There are cases in which farmers successfully used the Organic Law to assert their rights. In March 1999 the first reported case of a recall of a villager committee chair occurred in a village outside Harbin, Heilongjiang. This case caught the attention of and won the praise of NPC officials who declared that recall was the highest form of the right to supervise (77). This case is a typical case of township Party officials colluding with village leaders to undercut village self-government. In 1996, Dong Youshou was elected as the villager committee chair in Jile village. He was the only candidate for the position (which is already unlawful as the Organic Law requires multiple candidates for all positions) because the township Party secretary said that the villagers did not have the right to nominate candidates and that his candidate should be the only candidate.
Xu Guojun, an ordinary villager, studied the articles of the Organic Law and put up a poster declaring the election in Jile village illegal and demanding a new election. Xu was detained by the township security agency for 24 days. In October 1998, the government began to buy out the farmers’ land to build levees against recurring flooding. A total of 15 million yuan was given to the village but there was never any fiscal transparency in the village. All accounting books were closed to villagers. Under pressure from the villagers, Dong finally made the land sale account public. His land was sold for close to a quarter of a million yuan, much more than any other household in the village.
A month later, a villager saw the passage of the new Organic Law on Villager Committees on television and told Xu that the central government had given them rights to elect and recall village leaders and to be informed of the decisions concerning their well-being. They went to the township and bought two copies of the Organic Law and other related laws. Ten sessions were organised among the villagers to study the Law. Signatures were then collected to file a petition to remove Dong from his position. Realising that neither the chair nor vice chair would convene a recall meeting, the villagers approached the village Party branch. Because the Party branch also refused to call the meeting, a few villagers suggested going to Harbin to appeal to the provincial leaders. Others proposed using the public address system in the village to organise a meeting. Xu rejected both plans telling his supporters that they should follow legal procedure and first go to the township.
The new Party secretary of the township felt the villagers’ demand was fair and just and decided to persuade Dong to resign in order to preserve stability. Dong declined. The secretary therefore sent township officials to verify the signatures on the petition and investigate if there were enough voters to remove Dong. There were a total of 746 signatures calling for Dong’s recall, far surpassing the required number of 325. Under the supervision of the township government, a recall meeting was called on March 8th. Of the 1,622 voters in Jile, 1,466 cast ballots, with 897 votes supporting the removal of Dong and 471 against it. Dong was removed. Upon hearing of the recall, the Party secretary of Harbin commented that he was extremely happy to see the villagers actively using the law to protect their own rights and that it was an indication of the awareness of the farmers of democratic processes (78). However, what would have happened had the old township Party secretary still been in power? Would the farmers from Jile have been able to launch the recall procedure without the backing of the township Party Committee?
Assuming Party seniors such as Peng Zhen and Bo Yibo had no intention of introducing real democracy in China’s vast countryside, village elections were therefore institutionalised in order to prevent further decline of state authority and to maintain a responsive and accountable bureaucratic corps at the village level. The introduction of the law was partially successful due to the personal influence of leaders like Peng and Bo, and skilful manoeuvring and clever arguments on the part of the MCA officials. They thus played a game of language, using the Party’s rhetoric to defeat the Party’s opposition against loosening the central control over the villages.
The initial consequences of village democracy law are still being evaluated but this Law has certainly contributed to the social stability and the economic growth of certain areas of the country. The law also consolidated the state’s ability to implement its policies at the village level. This has made it impossible for opponents to the Law to overturn it. The recent combination of stagnant economic development in the countryside and the aggressive implementation by township governments of state policies has caused restiveness and agitation in the countryside. This has created a situation similar to the one that existed in the early 1980s when the Organic Law was first considered.
The most fierce opposition to and obstruction of the Organic Law have come from the township/town sector that used to control every decision in China’s villages. The opposition will continue to be fierce. Ironically, the tension between the villages and the townships may also force national leaders to open up top township/town government positions for election since there seems to be no way to resolve the growing conflict between villagers and the leaders they have elected and frustrated township/town officials. With more and more officials at this level seeing the benefit of direct elections and leaning towards adopting them, the wall between VC elections and township elections may finally break down. Throughout the past decade during which the Organic Law was implemented in the countryside, the Party has maintained a high vigilance, carefully monitoring the extent to which this Law might cripple the strength of the Party. When the decision to revise the law was made, the Party’s organisational apparatus managed to insert Article 3 guaranteeing its perennial control over governance in villages. Opposition to the Law will continue to heavily influence the expansion of village democracy if the governments at the county, municipal and provincial levels ignore reactionary behaviours at the township level.
Although the implementation of the Organic Law is uneven and has stalled in many provinces where there is no high and middle-level support for it, it has influenced great numbers of villagers. The millions of farmers who participated in the elections were at first shocked to see that these elections were real, and then learned to apply the law in defence of their interests and pursuit of a better life. This change in perception and the repeated practice of going to cast ballots every three years will be crucial in the next stage of democratisation in China. In fact, village elections are responsible for a flurry of experiments at the township level in late 1998 and early 1999, including the direct election in Buyun. In the words of Mi Youlu, editor-in-chief of Xiangzhen luntan (Forum on Townships and Villages), “There has been horizontal expansion and vertical deepening of the democratic process at the village level. With the sharpening of democratic awareness among villagers, the call for wider choice and accountability has escalated, triggering different forms of township elections in Sichuan, Guangdong and Shanxi”. Such experiments will eventually trigger a constitutional crisis because the Constitution does allow direct election of government officials at the township and county level (79).
Direct elections at the township level will inevitably weaken the Party’s control. Although the Centre may not come tumbling down its control of the periphery, particularly of the countryside which is vast, may eventually become marginalised. China will not become a democracy any time soon but VC elections are preparing it to embrace a more democratic political system and one creating a safe path for the current system to evolve into a less centralised and more autonomous structure.
|
Revised version of a paper presented at the international conference on “Central-Pe
riphery Relations in China: Integration, Disintegration or Reshaping of an Empire?”, jointly organised by the CEFC and the Department of Political science of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (March 24-25th 2000).