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BOOK REVIEW
One mainland, two
systems
Rural Democracy in China by Baogang He
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Since the formal promulgation of the Organic Law of Village
Committees in 1987, about 800 million rural Chinese have
experienced semi-competitive elections. Due to the
domination of communist party cadres over representative
assemblies, skepticism about village elections is justified.
Yet, the experiment of participatory institutions within the
Chinese authoritarian state tests cynics who insist that the
two cannot coexist.
Using extensive data gathered in 12 years of field research,
political scientist Baogang He argues in a new book that
progress has been made in China's grassroots governance and
power structures. In the same breath, he cautions against
exaltation of village democracy's benefits, since it is "an
instrumental mechanism for the continuation of Chinese
resilient authoritarianism". (p7)
The Chinese government's theory of village democracy
combines authoritarian ideas of self-government under tight
party control with liberal ideas of free and fair elections
by secret ballot. He reminds readers of an alternative
"Chinese folk theory" that expects tempering of the rich and
caring for the disadvantaged groups in the village. This is
the normative ideal against which he juxtaposes the actual
practice of grassroots democratic experiments.
 The
1987 Organic Law took three years and over 30 revisions of
drafts before being passed. After several rounds of
contested debates over whether rural China needs elections,
it was converted from "provisional" into final law only in
1998. Attempts to legislate an independent electoral
commission have so far run into determined obstruction from
various layers of the government. The state "ensures its
significant presence in the whole process of elections"
through its point persons on the ground, the village party
secretaries.
While these structural roadblocks remain, they are being
resisted by villagers who often do not vote for candidates
handpicked by the party. Beginning in Jilin province in
1993, villagers invented and practiced haixuan, or
direct nomination of candidates, a move that proved to be
highly successful in solving administrative problems such as
the common rural refusal to pay taxes and fees. Since 1999,
the dismissal by recall of corrupt village heads and
committee members by majority vote before completion of
their terms has risen in frequency.
The question of who is a "villager" and an eligible voter
has become increasingly problematic in the context of
China's rapid economic growth. Fighting for villager status
implies staking claim for a share of the collective wealth
and welfare provisions. Large-scale migration in and out of
villages has generated a floating population that is not
recognized as part of the electorate. If decisions of voter
eligibility are left to village assemblies, it can lead to
discrimination against minority groups. This type of
iniquity has increased the need for local courts to
"intervene and counterbalance the majoritarian tendencies of
democratic institutions". (p51) The author sees in these
developments the emergence of a "rights-based political
morality".
Progressively, the competition of village elections has
shifted from single to multiple candidates. In some cases,
the competition is so stiff that no candidate is able to win
an absolute majority. The rate of re-election of incumbents
is declining and the names of winners are no longer foregone
conclusions before voting takes place. Although Chinese
officials denounce election campaigning as "bourgeois",
villagers express a desire for it in order to make better
choices.
Political marketplace
Generally, He finds greater electoral competition in richer
villages because they allocate handsome salaries and
allowances for holders of posts. In these villages,
"different groups with their interests are able to compete
for power, thereby forming a political market". (p64)
However, wherever the communist party branch has the keys to
economic resources, competition is low. Wealthier villages
also score better in degree of political participation since
the economic prize of obtaining power is bigger. Village
committees also function more efficiently in prosperous
villages because of their healthier budgets. The main policy
inference from He in this context is that "for village
democracy to work, the rural economy needs to be improved".
(p174)
Although voter turnout in village elections has been high,
it could be the result of rewards between 5 to 60 yuan
(US$0.70 $8.30) as compensation for lost labor or of
inducements of government officials anxious to achieve
quotas. A 2005 survey found 25% of the respondents to be
apathetic to the electoral process. This is in sync with the
government's predisposition for "orderly participation" so
that discipline and obedience are not upturned.
A majority of villagers cast votes for candidates who can
develop the local economy. Rural entrepreneurs and directors
of private enterprises frequently get elected as village
heads. Quite a high percentage of voters also choose
candidates considered to have high moral standard and
character. The author notes a movement away from kinship
ties as a basis of vote choice, heralding "modern village
citizenship". (p79) This is occurring despite the post-Mao
resurrection of lineage identities in a milieu of looser
ideological supervision.
Local officials and party secretaries looked at villager
representative meetings as threats to their own power, but
these have grown more active since 2000. In parts of
Guangdong province, representative assemblies are the
highest village power institutions that are impervious to
manipulation by party cadres. Fears held by critics that
representative assemblies were undermining the ideal of
direct democracy are being answered with innovative
solutions like "village opinion cards" and weekly dialogues.
Private capitalists and the new rich invariably run
representative assemblies like exclusive elite clubs.
Township authorities "take pains to train the rich man into
a politician, name him as candidate, and help him get
elected". (p106) The nouveau riche who get elected have to
balance pressures from above (party officials) and below
(voters). Some village heads even put the villagers'
interests before those of the township authorities. However,
He's survey reveals that only 15% of village heads think
they have more power than the party secretary. The party
maintains its hegemony through its legally defined "leading
role" and by its grip on the economic resources of the
village.
Thanks to China's patriarchal family structure, women's
participation in village democracy is relatively low.
Democratic methods are regularly used to deny women who
marry into other villages the rights to vote and receive
economic benefits. The number of female village committee
members has been decreasing since 1998. The few who do get
into office are allocated secondary roles that match alleged
"female qualities". In the face of societal prejudices
against women in public affairs, affirmative action policies
of the Chinese legal system have not gone far.
Township leaders play a complex role in China's rural
democracy. By law, they administer, arbitrate and oversee
the conduct of village elections. Yet, some of them oppose
village elections as hindrances in implementation of party
policies in the countryside. The author found township
officials holding beliefs that "villagers have no interest
in elections because what they care most is to make more
money". (p148) A number of them are evolving sophisticated
ways of manipulating village elections from behind the
scenes, prompting He to coin the label, "democratic
Machiavellianism".
The author concludes with the big question of whether
village elections could extend to townships through a
"moving-up process". The answer is relevant to the issue of
democratization of the Chinese state organization itself.
Village elections raise doubts about the legitimacy of
appointed township leaders, reflecting "internal tensions
between the electoral logic and the authoritarian logic".
(p201)
Sporadic incidences of direct voting for the positions of
township heads and party secretaries have been occurring
since 1998, but with serious deficiencies. A small "leading
group" of the party organization usually manufactures the
outcomes of these events. Among the central leadership,
former premier Zhu Rongji and Premier Wen Jiabao have
expressed support for township elections but the National
People's Congress and the Central Party Organization have
shot down the balloon owing to fear that they could
"threaten a rapid unraveling of CCP [Chinese Communist
Party] authority". (p211)
In He's judgement, most Chinese villagers today enjoy
formalistic democracy but are a long way from substantive
democracy. Village democracy is distant from "state
democracy" and has had little impact on the Chinese state's
governance at the macro-level. Using the comparisons of the
Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan, which also introduced
local elections within authoritarian states, He predicts
that it will take several more years before a national
election can happen in China.
The author characterizes Chinese authoritarianism with
limited democratic elements as a "mixed regime" that,
despite contradictions, fortifies the CCP's supremacy. "One
Country, Two Systems" has been applied in Chinese legend to
offshore territories Hong Kong and Macau. He's study does
not use this particular formulation but allows it to be
employed to describe the mainland's political system as
well. His book offers a salutary check on tendencies to
assess China solely on the basis of national level trends.
Rural Democracy in China. The Role of Village Elections
by Baogang He, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007. ISBN:
978-0-230-60016-4. Price: US$74.95, 277 pages.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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