China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [46]
A study of thirty-four villages in Shaanxi province in 2000 by John Kennedy reached similar conclusions. Of all the formal candidates, only 35 percent were nominated by villagers, 21 percent were chosen by the village party branches, and 26 percent were nominated by township governments. Kennedy also found that if open nominations, or haixuan, were held, nonparty members would more likely win. The nomination process is therefore the most critical link in village elections—the more open the nomination process, the more competitive the elections. Official interference in the election process invariably undermines the legitimacy of village elections because rural residents are politically sophisticated enough to tell real elections from phony ones.119 The results of Hu Rong’s survey of 913 villagers in Fujian in 2001 reinforced the findings reported by Shi, Xiao, and Kennedy. Forty percent of the villagers reported that party and township governments nominated the candidates.120 A different study of elections in 231 villages in Fujian in 2000 showed that only about 53 percent of the sampled villages had complied with the electoral rules laid out in the Organic Law.121
Provincial data provide additional evidence that local ruling elites have decisive influence in the nomination process. During the elections held in 1999 in Jilin, which is considered one of the pioneers in implementing village elections, 49 percent of the members of the villagc election committees were party members, and 13 percent were incumbents. Sixty-nine percent of the election committee directors were village party secretaries; 16 percent of the election committee directors were incumbent chairmen of the villagers’ committees. Only 15 percent of the election committee directors were ordinary villagers.122 A study of the election results in 2000 in Fujian (another pioneer in village elections) shows similar patterns: 92 percent of the village election committees were headed by CCP village branch secretaries.123 In examining the election results in forty counties in Hunan in 1999, one researcher found that 55 percent of the members of village election committees were party members and 92 percent of the heads of the election committees were village party chiefs. 124 The ability of the party to control the election process is most likely the direct cause of the dominance of the elected villagers’ committees by CCP members (Table 2.3).
Another controversy surrounding village elections is whether they have any substantive effects on local governance, especially on the redistribution of power. Unfortunately, no systematic data are available to shed light on this question. Limited information appears to suggest that under the Organic Law, elected villagers’ committees do not have the power legally granted to them.125 Local authorities, especially unelected township governments and village party branches, infringe on the power of villagers’ committees through various means. For example, township governments take away the power of villagers’ committees by assuming the accounting responsibility of villages and by centralizing the budgeting and spending of all villages, thus making villagers’ committees practically powerless in managing fiscal affairs.126 They can, albeit illegally, remove elected village officials. In Qiangjimg city in Hubei, an investigation by Yao Lifa, a maverick deputy to the municipal People’s Congress, found that of the 329 villagers’ committee chairmen elected in September 1999, 187 (57 percent) had been illegally dismissed by township governments in the subsequent years before they served out their full terms. In addition, 432 vice chairmen and villagers’ committee members had been illegally removed from office in the same period. All the replacements were illegally appointed by the party and local governments. Such illegal removal of elected officials was reported in 269 of the 329 villages within the