China has published new draft rules for village elections, allowing villagers to fire officials who don’t perform as promised.

When village elections were rolled out nationwide in 1998, to improve local officials’ responsiveness to local concerns, some Chinese reformers hoped they would open the door to democracy in rural townships and urban districts.

However, elections have been frozen at the most basic level.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, elections, village elections
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[A time of] revisions to the Election Law is at a critical stage and the opportunity to abrogate the “one-fourth clause” is already ripe. Those who participated in a meeting for legislative research have reached a common consensus: as regards the People’s Congress elections, the fact that one urban city resident counts as more than four villagers is absolutely unacceptable. Currently, the division in opinion lies in [how to approach the matter]: should one city resident be allowed to equal one rural resident at once, or should adjustments take place piecemeal, first letting one urban city resident equal two rural residents?

There is still about a half year’s worth of time should the “at once” approach take place and next spring’s National People’s Congress agree to these changes. A number of constitutional scholars believe that the historical legitimacy of the “one-fourth clause” and the unequal urban city voting rights that extended over half a century may soon come to an end. When will be the time that urban resident population or rural resident residence [numbers] cease to matter, and a new era usher in “one man, one vote,” with “same vote, same rights”?

An image from a November 2006 Beijing election (CFP), via Southern Weekend.

Read more about China’s Election Law on CDT.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Election law, elections, people's congress, translation excerpt
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This year, as the direct and democratic election of the Taiwanese regional leadership drew near, I was interested for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to get a real picture of the Taiwanese popular election and its political manifestations. Secondly, I felt that the direction of Taiwan’s future depended on which party leader was elected president. Therefore, on the day of March 22, 2008 I paid very close attention to news stories concerning Taiwan’s presidential election. On some websites there were play-by-play updates and pictures depicting the Taiwanese voters at the polls. On portal websites and main media outlets, however, the content and analysis concerning the election were markedly dull. Reports on the election had been watered down, even trivialized.

The lack of detailed coverage by Mainland media is fundamentally shortsighted. Taiwan is a part of China and this major political event, the popular election for president, is also one of China’s major political events. If we are to devote ourselves to the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, we cannot focus on one more than the other. Instead, Mainland Chinese should be able to witness Taiwan’s popular election for president on television. Not only will Mainlanders be better able to understand Taiwan’s particular political system, but in the process, they will also have a greater understanding of the political lives of their compatriots. Moreover, Taiwan is a region of China. Regardless of when the Mainland is able to carry out direct, popular elections of leaders at the village, county, municipal and provincial levels, the Taiwanese experience can be used as a source of reference. After all, the election in Taiwan is a direct democratic election in a region of China that has more than 20 million people.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, elections, Taiwan elections 2008
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Anyone who is wondering what the future holds for China might take a close look at what happened in Russia over the weekend …

… There are two critical factors in achieving a “managed democracy:” of the sort that appears to be evolving in Russia, it seems to me. Intimidating or co-opting the opposition so there is little real alternative to your candidate is one. But the other is the acquiescence of a large chunk of the population. People in Russia wanted (and apparently still want) stability after the upheavals of the Yeltsin era. People in China want to keep riding the economic boom as long as they can, which is the reason that if there were elections next week, the Communist Party would likely get the nod, particularly if they followed rule number one (emasculating the opposition). The question then, of course, is what happens if they good times come to an end, as they eventually must.

© Japhet Weeks for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: democracy, Dmitry Medvedev, elections
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199 committee members were elected by 953 representatives at the seventh national meeting of writers. Tie Ning won about 790 votes, the lowest among the elected committee members. All the other new members won more than 800 votes. But in the chairman election, Tie was the only candidate. She got about 160 votes.

The Chairman of the China Association of Writers is a very honorable position. Only two respectable Chinese writers, Mao Dun and Ba Jin, once held it. Tie is the third and is the first female chairman.

-Read Ya Zhou Zhou Kan (Chinese) for more
-Also read sohoxiaobao blog

© Mo Ming for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elections, Tie Ning, writers
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The polls closed at noon and by 2 p.m. Yao Lifa was hunkered down inside a restaurant with a group of first-time candidates, waiting to hear who had been elected to their local assembly.

Mr. Yao phoned another candidate who was supposed to be joining the gathering. Their conversation ended abruptly. Yao looked around the table, his can-do smile down a notch. He explained that they would be one short as the police had detained their colleague for telling voters to write his name on the ballot. “The pressure just gets more and more,” he sighs.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese are going to the polls this year to vote for their local assembly, offering a small measure of political choice in a one-party state. But independent candidates are finding their path blocked by local officials that flout election law to favor their own loyalists. The result is a democratic gesture that offers little hope to reformers pushing for bottom-up alternatives to authoritarianism. [Full text]

For more background on the situation, read a statement from Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elections, grassroots democracy
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In a significant move, China’s ruling Communist Party, on Monday, promised to hold local elections for the first time in the world’s most populous nation.

“Elections to local committees of the Communist Party of China(CPC) represent an enormous step toward the promotion of reform and democracy in China,” an official said.

“The elections of new leaderships at provincial, city, county and township levels will help to realise the strategic goal of building a socialist, harmonious society,” added the official.

See also CPC promoting reform, democracy in local leadership elections by Xinhua

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCP, elections
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Being an opposition candidate in a one-party state was never going to be easy, but Feng Qiusheng took more of a risk than most when he decided to run for the People’s Congress in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.

This was not just because his previous attempt to defend human rights resulted in a four-month prison term. Nor was it because he was campaigning against a communist political machine that has held power almost unchallenged for 57 years.

The real risk was in where he chose to make his stand: the flashpoint village of Taishi, where China’s nascent rural democracy movement has run up against some of the worst violence and official intimidation seen since the central government promised greater electoral accountability at the grass-roots level in 1988.

It could hardly be further from the centre of power in Beijing, but Feng is treated like a threat to the state. He is followed by police, his phone is tapped and he is frequently called in for questioning by the authorities.

His supporters suffer similar treatment. For more than six months, Taishi has been gripped by fear.

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elections, Feng Qiusheng, lu banglie, Taishi
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In a study tour of Tibet, Wang Jinhong, a Chinese professor keen on grassroots democracy, was amazed to find that elections in remote villages had proceeded smoothly and efficiently.

“In voter registration, the nomination of candidates, election speeches and ballot counting, the principles of equality, fairness and openness have been fully observed,” said Prof. Wang with South China Normal University, in south China’s Guangdong Province.

He learnt that the election organizers had been trained in a China-European Union cooperative program on village governance.

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elections, grassroots democracy, social unrest, Tibet, village governance
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Li’s account of what happened that morning has become part of a bitter struggle between the local Communist Party apparatus and a group of discontented farmers who want new leadership for their village. The vote-buying at Li’s pancake stand, the farmers allege, was but one episode in a campaign during which thousands of dollars were spent to make sure that people in tune with party leaders would be elected to the seven-member council.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dangxi, democracy, elections, village elections
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According to Dr. Yawei Liu: “The two articles seem to reflect different dynamics in China’s countryside, one highlighting the deepening of the elections and the urgent need for standardized regulations and the other the same old practice of village chairs acting as henchmen for the township government.”

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2004. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elections, rural areas
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The full article is here. Thanks to Dr. Yawei Liu for sending this information to CDN’s notice.  

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2004. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: election, elections
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“Relying mainly on a recent Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) study, this article describes how the focus of peasant activism has moved from tax disputes to property rights, particularly in eastern areas of China, where urbanization has encroached on farmland, and where local governments are eager to make up for tax shortfalls with lucrative land sales.

The author often quotes the leader of the CASS study, professor Yu Jianrong, who believes that Chinese law must be revised to give peasants more control over their land, and who does not believe that rural migration to cities alone will solve the problem. Mr. Yu recommends an overhaul of China’s land ownership laws.”

The full translation is here.

The China Elections site also has posted a lengthy analysis of the Huang Jingao case.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2004. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elections, huang jingao, peasants
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