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Village Committee Elections in China: Institutionalist Tactics for Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Tianjian Shi
Tianjian Shi
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Abstract

Earlier institutionalist studies in Chinese politics have shown how conservatives and local bureaucrats took advantage of institutional designs in the Leninist system of the People's Republic of China to delay and undermine the implementation of reforms. There has been less discussion of how reformers adapted their strategies to existing institutional constraints to overcome the opposition of conservatives. Using the implementation process of the Organic Law of the Village Committees, this article describes how the reformers adapted to the Chinese institutional setting to promote political reform over opposition at the elite and local levels.

As the case of the village elections shows, the reformers in China designed a strategy to promote reform incrementally. Each step along the way was arranged to appear to be a natural response to the interaction between the initial reform policy and unforeseen consequences brought about by the previous policy. In this process, reformers deliberately manipulated a crucial variable—time—to bring about gradual change in the important actor, that is, the peasants, from spectators into participants, and thereby to change the balance of power between proponents and opponents of the reform. Other political players were also carefully enfranchised at different stages of the implementation process to help reformers in their struggle against conservatives.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , April 1999 , pp. 385 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1999

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References

1 For discussion of the rules and regulations of elections at the provincial level, see Research Group on the System of Village Self-Government in Rural China and the China Research Society of Basic-level Governance, Study on the Election of Villagers' Committees in Rural China (Beijing: China Society Publishing House, 1994), 1–4Google Scholar.

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5 According to officials in the Ministry of Civil Affairs, voters in Shandong removed more than 30 percent of incumbents from office in the 1995 elections. Most of them were grassroots members of the CCP. Shandong has 110 counties; on average, each county has 15–20 townships and each township has 20—30 administrative villages. Based on these figures, one concludes that 9,900 to 19,800 CCP members in Shandong Province were voted out of office in a single election (110 × 15 × 20 × .3 or 110 × 20 × 30 × .3).

6 Mufson (fn. 4).

7 Author interview with electoral official of a province located in the eastern part of China, July 1996.

8 Based on a four-county survey in rural China, Manion argues that elections made village leaders responsive to both old and newly emerging constituencies, as reflected in significant congruences between village leaders and their selectorates above and the electorate below. See Manion, Melanie, ”The Electoral Connection in the Chinese Countryside,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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15 Zhao favored establishing village administrative offices to replace people's communes. Interview conducted in August 1996. See also O'Brien, Kevin and Li, Lianjiang, ”The Struggle over Village Elections,” in MacFarquhar, Roderick and Goldman, Merle, eds., The Paradox of China's Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

16 The reason for Zhao's ignorance of grassroots democracy is fairly complicated. Part of the reason is fear of Luan, or chaos, in rural areas and the loss of govemability for local cadres. On several occasions, he expressed the concern that if peasants were allowed to choose their leaders by votes, local cadres would have great difficulty implementing government policy and collecting taxes. Author interview, Beijing, August 1996. Another reason is that in both Marxist theory and the traditional theory on democratization, peasants are considered to be obstacles to democracy. In the Marxist intellectual tradition, the peasantry is a class whose disappearance would be its first, last, and only service to the bourgeois revolution and hence to historical progress. Moore also argues, ”no bourgeois, no democracy.” He treats the peasants as an obstacle to democratization. See Moore (fn. 12), 418.

17 Both the reformers and opposition believed that democratization required changes in the structure of the central government, a free, independent press, and probably a founding election. See Wu, Guoguang, ”Weishengme zai nongcun, weishengme shi nongmin: zhongguo mingzhuhua shibai zhongde yige liwai,” in Mingtong, Chen and Yongnian, Zheng, eds., Liangan Jicen (Basic-level elections and political and social change on both sides of the Taiwan Strait) (Taipei: Yuedan Publishing, 1997), 428Google Scholar.

18 Both the reformers and the opposition subscribed to social mobilization theory. Interestingly enough, their belief in social mobilization theory, especially the structural requirements for democracy, was reinforced by official ideology inherited from Marxism. Neither of them thought peasants could help bring democracy into China. Some of the opposition charged that those who proposed to initiate electoral reform in rural China were naive, if not ”antidemocratic.” See Yang, Gan, ”Gongmin geti weiben, tongyi xianzheng liguo,” Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-first Century) (June 1996Google Scholar).

19 O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (fn. 13), chap. 5; Diamond, Larry, Linz, Juan J., and Lipset, Seymour Martin, Politics in Developing Countries, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.:Lynne Rienner, 1995), 27–31Google Scholar.

20 In Eastern Europe the renaissance of autonomous group activity undermined communist domination by puncturing the psychology of fear and passivity, revitalizing social morality, regenerating political efficacy, and reporting the truth about the gross abuses of power. See Sadowski, Christine, ”Autonomous Groups as Agents of Democratic Change in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” in Diamond, Larry, ed., Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (Boulder, Colo.:Lynne Rienner, 1994Google Scholar).

21 O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (fn. 13), 48.

22 Ibid., chap. 3.

23 Ibid., 48.

24 O'Brien (fn. 3), 54–56; McCormick (fn. 2), 131–56; idem, ”China's Leninist Parliament and Public Sphere: A Comparative Analysis,” in McCormick, Barrett L. and Unger, Jonathan, eds., China after Socialism (Armonk, N.Y.:M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 37–41Google Scholar; Womack, Brandy, ”The 1980 County-Level Elections in China: Experiment in Democratic Modernization,” Asian Survey 22 (March 1982), 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar—70.

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26 Thelen, Kathleen and Steinmo, Sven, ”Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” in Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen, and Longstreth, Frank, eds., Structuring Politics: HistoricalInstitution-alism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992Google Scholar), 2; Ikenberry, G. John, ”Conclusion: An Institutional Approach to American Foreign Economic Policy,” in Ikenberry, G. John, Lake, David A., and Mastanduno, Michael eds., The State and American Foreign Economic Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1988), 226Google Scholar.

27 North (fn. 25), 343.

28 Wang had worked as a farmer during the Mao era before he passed the college entrance examination and entered college after the Cultural Revolution. He told the author that he hardly had enough to eat during that period. On one occasion his hunger was so severe that he could hardly move his legs without falling down. Author interview, Beijing, August 1996.

29 Author interview with an official in the Rural Development Research Institute, Beijing, April 1989.

30 Most of them came from the Rural Development Institute (RDl), a center of economic reform. The RDI was disbanded by the party for its heavy involvement in the democracy movement after June 4. The staffs of the institute were reassigned to different governmental organizations. Those in charge of implementing the Organic Law were assigned to the MCA.

31 For changes of composition in the Chinese bureaucracy in the 1980s, see, among others, Li, Cheng and White, Lynn T. III, ”The Thirteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,” Asian Survey 28, no. 4 (1988Google Scholar); and idem, ”Elite Transformation and Modern Change in Mainland China and Taiwan: Empirical Data and the Theory of Technocracy,” China Quarterly 121 (March 1990Google Scholar).

32 In the 1950s the MCA was one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful ministry in China.

It controlled not only basic-level administration but also the police. Many high-ranking officials wanted to restore the ministry to its former power. They believed that organizing elections in rural China would benefit the ministry in its quest for prestige and power. Based on such considerations, they supported the efforts of Wang and his staff. Author interview with cadres in the Department of Grassroots Administration, MCA, Beijing, July 1996.

33 A good indicator of the status of the ministry is that when Yan Mingfu was demoted by the central committee after June 4, he was appointed by the organizational department of the CCP as deputy minister of this body.

34 Lin (fn. 4), 24–25.

35 Since the village committee was codified in the 1982 Chinese constitution, Peng argued, it was improper and illegal to establish government offices in Chinese villages.

36 Xueju, Li, Zhongguo Chengxiang Jicenzbengquan Jianshegongzuo Yanjiu (The study of reconstruction of grassroots administration in rural and urban China) (Beijing: Chinese Society Publishing House, 1994), 72–74Google Scholar. For Peng Zhen's role, see also O'Brien and Li (fn. 15).

37 There was one exception to this observation. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Incident, the powerful personnel department of the CCP, in conjunction with some provincial leaders, expressed its opposition to direct village elections. Conservatives within the CCP charged that such elections were ”examples of peaceful evolution” and suggested abolishing the plan. At that critical moment two veteran leaders, Peng Zhen and Bo Yibo, rose to challenge those allegations and defend the project. See Lin (fn. 4), 32–33. They summoned Song Ping, director of the personnel department of the CCP, to Peng's home to persuade him to support the implementation of reform. Thanks to their intervention, the project survived an attack from more conservative elements, and elections in rural China were held even as many other reform measures, including economic projects, were suspended. White, Tyrene, ”Rural Politics in the 1990s: Rebuilding Grassroots Institutions,” Current History 91, no. 566 (1992), 276Google Scholar; O'Brien (fn. 3), 49.

38 With reform already in progress, many bureaucrats also realized that elections were the key to better leadership and a guarantee of successful enforcement of party policy under the changing circumstances in China. Although taxes and other collections in a county adjacent to Renshou were much higher than those collected by officials in Renshou, the peasants never rebelled. Further investigation shows that because the MCA designated that county as a model county for promoting rural elections, the peasants there actively participated in the decision-making process for public projects. See Zheng, Yongnian, ”Xiangcunminzhu he zhongguo zhengzhijincheng,” Twenty-first Century, no. 35 (June 1996), 27Google Scholar. Bureaucrats found to their surprise that such participation also enhanced citizens' sense of responsibility, which made the task of governing easier. Author interview with ten BCA officials, BeijingJuly 1996.

39 As correctly pointed out by McCormick, they opposed the reforms, not because they believed the changes would threaten the authority of the party as a whole, but because the reforms threatened their personal interests, which could be quite different from those of the regime generally. See McCormick (fn. 2), 146.

40 The organization responsible for electoral reform in the MCA is the Department of Grassroots Administration (jiceng zhengquanjianshesi). The administrative arm of the department is the Desk of Grassroots Administration in provincial BCAs.

41 Author interview, Weichang, Hebei Province, August 8,1996, at the international conference on village elections organized by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

42 This happened in areas where there were no major collective enterprises. In villages having collective enterprises, the situation was quite different and remains so.

43 Author interviews with officials of the provincial Civil Affairs Bureaus from Shanxi, Hunan, Jilin, and Henan, July 1996. See also Lin (fn. 4), 19–20.

44 Zheng (fn. 38), 27.

45 When I visited Hequ and Shenchi Counties in Shanxi Province, the heads of the BCA in both counties mentioned to me explicitly that when villages ask peasants for money, the peasants ask in turn to participate in the decision-making process. Author interviews, Hequ and Shenchi Counties, Shanxi Province, July 1995.

46 Gourevitch, Peter, ”The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 42 (Autumn 1978), 882Google Scholar.

47 For a set of rules to be institutions, knowledge of these rules must be shared by the members of the relevant community or society. Knight, Jack, Institutions and Social Conflict (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969Google Scholar); Dittmer, Lowell, ”Public and Private Interests and the Participatory Ethic in China,” in Falkenheim, Victor C., ed., Citizens and Groups in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor:Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1987), 18–27Google Scholar.

49 See Nathan, Andrew, Chinese Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 193–223Google Scholar. McCormick found that dominant groups in the leadership had rejected crucial aspects of the Western model, such as the relative legal autonomy of civil society and relatively free competition in elections. See McCormick (fn. 2), 131.

50 Lieberthal, Kenneth and Oksenberg, Michel, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Process (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988Google Scholar), 24. For a discussion of policy implementation in China, see also Lampton, David M., ed., Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987Google Scholar).

51 Lieberthal and Oksenberg (fn. 50), 24–25.

52 Author interview with officials in RDI, Beijing, January 1989.

53 Huntington says that ”the most effective method of reform is the combination of a Fabian strategy with blitzkrieg tactics.” See Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1968Google Scholar), 346.

54 Many arguments can be right and extremely sensible but not ”correct,” and the ”correct argument” may not necessarily be a sensible one, especially to outsiders. To understand the real implication of the arguments made by reformers, they must be considered within the political context of their own society.

55 MacDonagh, Oliver, Early Victorian Government, 1830–1870 (New York:Holmes and Meier, 1977), 8–9Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., 9.

57 Rather than openly advocating abandoning the socialist system when they started the reform process, reformers in China emphasized the instrumental benefits of reform measures. A good example is the struggle of the late 1970s between the ”whatever faction” and the ”practice faction,” which led to the demise of Hua Guofeng, the chairman of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Members of the whatever faction tried their best to turn the debate between themselves and veteran leaders represented by Deng Xiaoping into an ideological one. They knew that by arguing for complying with orthodox ideology, they were guaranteed to win. For their part, Deng Xiaoping and his allies, with the strong support of the general populace and powerful figures in the army, tried very hard to shift the debate with the leaders of the Cultural Revolution from an ideological one to an instrumental one. Their slogan—practice is the sole criterion of truth—was designed to effect this shift. Meisner, Maurice, Mao's China andAfter:A History ofthe People's Republic, rev. ed. (New York:Free Press, 1980), 448Google Scholar–65.

58 His famous cat theory was clearly aimed at avoiding ideological debate with his political enemies. After 1989 he openly suggested putting such debate aside and concentrating on economic development to safeguard economic reform.

59 Desk, Rural, Department of Grassroots Administration of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, ed., Text-bookfor the Study of Village Self-Government (Beijing: Ministry of Civil Affairs, 1991), 90Google Scholar.

60 Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 3–6Google Scholar.

61 Naughton found such a strategy to be the key to the success of the economic reforms in China. See Naughton, Barry, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993 (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1996), 309Google Scholar.

62 For strategies used by local bureaucrats to change the essence of policy made by the central authorities, see, among others, McCormick (fn. 2), 145—54; idem, ”China's Leninist Parliament and the Public Sphere,” in McCormick and Unger (fn. 24), 29–53; and O'Brien (fn. 3).

63 Research Group on the System of Village Self-Government in Rural China and the China Research Society of Governance, Basic-Level, The Report on Village Representative Assembles in China (Beijing: China Society Publishing House, 1995), 58Google Scholar.

64 Wang Zhenyao, ”Woguo nongcun de lishibiange yu cunminzizhi de biran qushi,” Rural Desk (fn. 59), 41.

65 Research by Kelliher on the debate over elections also found that all arguments made by the reformers in the public discussions concentrated on instrumental benefits. They argued that elections could bring stability to rural China, help local cadres to enforce government policy, prevent peasants from rebelling, and defend the regime against foreign criticism on human rights violations; see Kelli-her (fn. 2), 63–86.

66 As in implementing other government policies, in provinces where the major leaders supported the reforms, officials at the bureau tended to push hard for rural elections. In provinces where major leaders were indifferent, the attitudes of the officials at the BCA would become critical for the implementation of the Organic Law. In provinces where major leaders were hostile to the Organic Law, the BCA officials could scarcely carry out their mission.

67 Author interview with officials of the Department of Grassroots Administration, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Beijing, July 1995. As of 1995, the MCA had sent all the leaders from model counties abroad.

68 Not all local officials opposed elections. During the period of peoples communes, elections were held in some rural areas. See Xueju Li, ”Zhongguo nongcun jicengzuzhi cuimin weiyuanhui,” in Rural Desk (fn. 59), 249–52.

69 Author interview with officials in the Department of Grassroots Administration, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Beijing, July 1995.

70 When I first contacted the organization responsible for implementing the law in 1989, one official told me this strategy was designed by them to implement the Organic Law. I found this explanation so implausible that I refused to meet their leader, Wang Zhenyao. At that time, I believed they never seriously considered bringing democracy to rural China but only wanted to fool outsiders. Author interview with an official in the Rural Development Research Institute, Beijing, April 1989.

71 Author interview with Wang Zhenyao, Beijing, July 1995.

72 This echoes the argument made by historical institutionalists that preference formation should be treated as endogenous. See, among others, Berger, Suzanne, ”Introduction,” in Berger, Suzanne, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981Google Scholar); Hall, Peter, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (New York:Oxford University Press, 1986Google Scholar); Katzenstein, Peter, Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies in Advanced Industrial Societies (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1978Google Scholar); Skocpol, Theda, The State and Social Revolutions (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1979CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

73 Author interview with officials in the MCA, Beijing, May 1996.

74 Author interview with officials at the Rural Desk, Department of Grassroots Administration, MCA, Beijing, July 1996.

75 For Western research on appeals of ordinary Chinese to higher authorities, see, among others, Shi, Tianjian, Political Participation in Beijing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997Google Scholar). Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang called such behavior rightful resistance; see Li and O'Brien, , ”Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China,” Modern China 22, no. 1 (1996Google Scholar); and O'Brien, , ”Rightful Resistance,” World Politics 49 (October 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For peasant reports of election manipulation, see, among others, Research Group (fn. 1), 104—9; Bai, Yihua and Zhenyao, Wang, Zhonghuarenmingongheguo cun-miniueiyuanhui xuanjugongzuofanli (The guiding example of elections for villagers' committees of the People's Republic of China) (Beijing: Social Publishing House, 1996), 160Google Scholar–66.

76 For figures in the United States, see Verba, Sidney and Nie, Norman, Participation in America: PoliticalDemocracy and Social Equality (New York:Harper and Row, 1972Google Scholar). For figures in other societies, see Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., and Kim, Jaeon, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven Nation Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978Google Scholar).

77 Kelliher worries that if self-government does not produce the right leaders, the right levels of training, taxes, and birth—or if its usefulness outside China as a public-relations trinket should subside—then what would the proponents of democracy do? Following their own logic in the published debate, they would abandon democracy and search for something else or some other instrument that works. See Kelliher (fn. 2), 35.

78 One may still argue that those elections help the CCP to consolidate its power. Even if elections voted a lot of incumbent officials out of office, the thinking goes, if the CCP were clever enough, it could always accept the newly elected officials as members and thus consolidate. We disagree with such an argument. If that happens, we would find that reformers had achieved a silent revolution, i.e., to transform the CCP from a Leninist party to a different kind of party. That would represent a major political development for the country.

79 Research Group (fn. 1), 166.

80 Yihua Bai and Wang Zhenyao (fn. 75), 160–62; Research Group (fn. 1), 105–9.

81 Research Group (fn. 1), 75, emphasis added.

82 In two conferences I participated in, one in 1995 and the other in 1996,1 found that officials of the MCA put their primary effort into persuading officials from different provinces to institutionalize the nomination process. In those provinces where election laws permitted the Communist Party and other political organizations to nominate candidates, they even pressed to amend the law.

83 Research Group (fn. 1), 74–75.

84 Yihua Bai and Wang Zhenyao (fn. 75), 59,215–29.

85 In an interview with officials in the MCA in the early 1990s, I asked them why they did not issue a document to curb election manipulation. They told me that they planned to do so but had to wait for the right time. Author interview with officials of the MCA, Beijing, 1993.

86 The reformers believed that only when they had achieved some limited success would they be able to persuade foreign participants to get involved.

87 At that time the MCA had achieved limited success in implementing the Organic Law. They were able to show such foundations that the elections in some places were real and convinced them they would not be throwing away their money if they decided to help.

88 A good example familiar to most students of Chinese politics is the case of reformers in the Ministry of Foreign Trade who used GATT and WTO applications to press for faster reform in many areas and to legitimate China's reformist policies. See Feeney, William R., ”China and the Multilateral Economic Institutions,” in Kim, Samuel S., ed., China and the World, 3d ed. (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, 1994), 242Google Scholar.

89 Kelliher (fn. 2), 75–78.

90 On their recent trip to China, both Gore and Gingrich cited rural elections as an indicator of positive development in China.

91 This happened after an international conference on village elections held in July 1995. The scholars, journalists, and foundation officials visited a village in suburban Tianjin. Because it is a rich village, there was no incentive for peasants there to change their leaders. And because there was little chance of defeating incumbents, there was little incentive for anyone in the village to challenge them. After foreign experts observed the elections, officials in the MCA openly sought their advice.

92 Based on field observations as well as on interviews with journalists from Hong Kong, May 1996.

93 Author interview with Wang Zhenyao, Beijing, July 1995. In a private conversation with the author, Wang mentioned the case several times, indicating that he thinks that the opinion of a foreign expert holds most sway with domestic audiences.

94 Author interview with Wang Zhenyao, Beijing, July 1995.

95 For the Hequ experience, see Lianjiang Li, ”The Two-Ballot System in Shanxi: Subjecting Village Party Secretaries to a Popular Vote,” China Journal (forthcoming).

96 A famous episode involving the Gang of Four further complicated the issue. During the Cultural Revolution, in the early 1970s, Jiang Qing proposed nominating a nonparty member as secretary of a party branch in a village. When people reminded her that the nominee was not even a party member, Jiang was reported to have replied that for a party branch at the grassroots level, it did not matter whether the secretary was a member of the party. The story became a well-known political joke after two famous actors made the episode public in a talk show. Any subsequent suggestion to allow non-party members to select a party secretary brought this incident to mind and was subject to ridicule. The MCA must still find a way to overcome this difficulty.

97 The discussion is based on my observations at the international conference about rural self-government in China in 1995, as well as on my interviews with MCA officials in July 1995.

98 Huntington (fn. 53), 346–62.

99 What is crucial here is their deep commitment to democratic values as indicated by their confidence in the ability of peasants in rural China to determine their own fate. The controversial decision to allow dirty, noncompetitive elections at the beginning stage of the process was based on the reformers' confidence that people would understand the importance of the elections and actively participate in them.

100 Ministry of Public Security, Zhongguo Chengxian Renko Tongji (Population statistics by city and county of the People's Republic of China) (Beijing: Map Publishing House of China, 1987Google Scholar).