China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [45]
In evaluating the impact of village elections on rural democratization, one of the most disputed issues is how competitive such elections are. Given the political dominance of the CCP, the likelihood that the party would permit genuinely competitive elections may be small. The findings from various surveys and field research, however, show a mixed picture. One indicator of competitiveness—whether elections have a single candidate or multiple candidates for the chairmanship of the villagers’ committee—appears to have improved. Shi reports that, in 1993, 53 percent of the villagers surveyed said that had multicandidate elections. In 2002, 70 percent reported multicandidate elections.112 But this measure may misrepresent the political reality in Chinese villages because the competitiveness of village elections depends not on how many formal candidates appear on the ballot, but on how such candidates are nominated.
Local party and township officials can manipulate the nomination process to ensure that their preferred candidates win positions on the villagers’ committees. Such manipulation is relatively easy to carry out because, like primaries, only a small percentage of the village voters normally attend nomination meetings. One study of forty villages in Fujian in 2001 found that only 12 percent of villagers attended nomination meetings.113 Indeed, Shi’s survey showed that in about a quarter of the villages, the party, the township government, and the previous villagers’ committees picked the members of the “village election leading group,” which organizes village elections and exerts decisive influence on the nomination process. Only about 43 percent of the villages formed their village election leading groups through an election by the village assembly or villagers’ small groups, as required by the revised Organic Law. Partly as a result of the influence of the party and local governments, only 43 percent of the villages used haixuan, the most democratic method of nomination, and 35 percent of villages used methods deemed illegal under the Organic Law.114
Applying the most stringent standard of competitiveness, Shi finds that only 11 percent of village elections held in China could meet all four requirements.115 If the legal requirements stipulated by the Organic Law are applied, Shi argues that only 31 percent of the villages in China are in compliance with the law.116 Case studies conducted by other researchers offer additional confirmation that elections in many, if not the majority, of villages do not follow proper procedures. A study of forty villages in Jiangxi in 1999 found that in one county, only one in five villages complied with the law, while in another county, one in two complied. In the same study, 61 percent of the villagers reported that the county and township “election guidance group” played the most important role in the election process; 31 percent said that village party secretaries wielded significant influence. The legally mandated village election committees played only a negligible role, with 60 percent of the villagers reporting that such committees had no influence. 117 The interference in the electoral process by the party and the government contributed to the peasants’ disillusionment with village elections. According to Xiao Tangbiao, while 79 percent of rural residents hoped to participate in real democratic elections, only 32 percent thought that such elections would be held. More important,