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its effectiveness. In addition to the weakening of the judiciary as a result of the CCP’s control of judicial appointments, the enormous power wielded by local governments over the judiciary undercuts the courts’ authority. Because judicial jurisdictions and administrative jurisdictions completely overlap one another, the dominance of the administrative authorities in effect creates what Chinese observers call judicial “independent kingdoms,” in which local political interests, instead of national law, hold sway. Under these conditions, laws made by the central government cannot be implemented or enforced, leading to the widespread problem of “local protectionism”—the phenomenon of local authorities providing political protection to local interests in violation of national laws. Consequently, enforcement of court judgments is extremely difficult when judicial authority is fragmented.97 One study finds that, despite official rhetoric about strengthening the legal system, court judgments became even more difficult to enforce in the late 1990s. In some cases, court judgments could not be executed without the explicit political backing from CCP officials.98

To remedy the structural weaknesses caused by such a fragmentation of judicial authority, Chinese scholars have offered several proposals for institutional reform. These proposals include the establishment of two separate judicial systems: a central system and a local system (similar to the American federal system); the formation of cross-regional courts; and the use of the central government’s appropriations to fund courts.99 The government has adopted none of them, however. Such a failure to implement crucial reforms led to a growing sense among China’s legal community that the court system had become so dysfunctional that more radical measures—or “major surgery,” to use a colorful phrase—would be required.100

In summary, the dominance of the party-state over the judiciary is the fundamental cause of the limitation of legal reform in China. The CCP’s goals in allowing legal reform are tactical in nature: such reform must serve the party’s overall strategy of maintaining its political monopoly through economic reform. Measures of legal reform must not threaten its authority or the institutional structure upon which its political supremacy is based. As long as the CCP places its own political interests above China’s need for the rule of law, legal reform will remain confined to the tactical realm.

Village Elections

The emergence of village elections in rural China since the late 1980s marks an important step toward democratization. Even though these elections produce, technically, a sell-governing civic organization, not a local government, the advent of village elections has led some analysts to praise them as an example of political liberalization in China.101 Based on his field research in 1999, Lianjiang Li argued that such elections politically empowered peasants and increased local political accountability.102 According to Kevin O’Brien, the introduction of elections into the villages would eventually lead to full citizenship status to rural residents, who have been denied many of the rights enjoyed by urban residents.103 Allen Choate, who oversaw the Asia Foundation’s democracy-assistance program in China, believes that village elections increased transparency in village governance and offered rural residents more choices of representation and avenues of appeal.104 Some Chinese social scientists hold similarly positive views of this democratic experiment, arguing that such elections have contributed to rising political consciousness among the peasantry and broken the balance of power in villages in favor of the villagers.105

Other scholars, however, were skeptical about the democratizing impact of village elections. Jean Oi and Scott Rozelle found in their study of elections in thirty-two villages that the elections did little to change the power balance and decision-making authority in these villages because the village communist party secretary retained