China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [44]
In all likelihood, the diversity of socioeconomic conditions in China, the unevenness with which local officials implement village elections, and the dearth of reliable data make it almost impossible to assess the role and impact of village elections in the expansion of democratization in rural China. In this section, we will review the evolution of village elections and focus on the most contentious, and unresolved, political issues surrounding this limited democratic experiment.
Villagers’ committees, averaging five to seven members who serve three-year terms, first emerged as an administrative replacement of the production brigade almost as soon as the agricultural decollectivization began. With the dismantling of the people’s communes, alternative institutions of grassroots governance in rural areas were needed. Similar to agricultural decollectivization, the movement toward self-government in the villages began as a spontaneous response by the peasantry to the deterioration of local governance following the disappearance of the communes. The Chinese government tentatively endorsed this democratic experiment because the authorities believed that such self governing civic organizations would help maintain rural stability. The strongest proponent for legalizing village elections was Peng Zhen, chairman of the NPC’s Standing Committee and a political hardliner. Peng was credited with the passage of the draft Organic Law on Village Committees in 1987 and its initial implementation, despite the conservative backlash in the aftermath of the Tiananmen tragedy in June 1989.108
Judging by the speed of implementation, village elections appeared to be a considerable success. Although only half the provinces had instituted village elections by 1990, the experiment quickly gathered momentum. In the early 1990s, the Chinese government promoted the use of “demonstration sites”—villages to which local officials were dispatched to develop and enforce proper election procedures. By the late 1990s, more than three hundred counties (or 15 percent of the total in the country) were designated as “demonstration counties,” and the number of villages as “demonstration sites” reached 164,000, about 18 percent of the total number of villages. 109The effect of using “demonstration sites” to improve village elections appeared to be limited, however. In Wang Zhenyao’s view, the procedures for village elections improved mostly as a result of pressures and initiatives from the peasantry. The popularization of competitive primaries (haixuan) was credited to village residents rather than to local officials. Indeed, when the Organic Law was revised in 1998, many of the electoral procedures invented and used by village residents were formally adopted and codified.
By the end of the 1990s, village elections had spread to nearly all Chinese provinces. In several provinces that led the nation in the implementation of village elections, four rounds of such elections had been held between 1988 and 2000. In eighteen provinces, three rounds had occurred. A survey conducted by Tianjian Shi in 2002 showed that 83 percent of the villagers polled reported elections in their villages in 2002, compared with 76 percent in 1993. The voter turnout rate had increased as well. In 1993, 63 percent of the respondents of a similar poll said that they had voted in the village elections. In the 2002 poll, 69 percent had voted.110 In some parts of China, village elections seem to have become more organized, and candidates are engaged in various campaign activities to seek voters’ support. In Fujian, for example, one study finds that 43 percent of the villagers reported that candidates visited their homes; 37 percent said that candidates asked their relatives for help with the campaign; 30 percent said that candidates called on their