From Chinese Law Prof Blog:
A little-remarked passage (part VI, numbered para. 1) in Hu Jintao’s work report to the 17th Party Congress [Chinese | English] last month calls for the gradual bringing into line of the different ratios of representation of rural and urban residents in China. I checked with a colleague who’s very well informed about China, and it turns out that even well-informed people don’t generally know that Art. 16 of the Election Law provides that urban residents shall get four times as many NPC seats per person as rural residents:
省、自治区、直辖市应选全国人民代表大会代表的名额，由全国人民代表大会常务委员会按照农村每一代表所代表的人口数四倍于城市每一代表所代表的人口数的原则分配。
This electoral discrimination against rural residents has a long history and arises, unsurprisingly enough, from the view that this was after all supposed to be a revolution led by the proletariat, and we can’t have them swamped by all those peasants. [Full Text]
[Image source: poco.cn]
