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Comparative Politics and Government

Notes did not really allow ordinary citizens to choose representatives. In 1979, a new election law introduced
direct election of deputies to county-level congresses, mandated secret ballots rather than public
displays of support, and required the number of candidates to be one and a half times the number of
deputies to be elected. Although local Communist Party organizations continue to play a key leadership
role in election committees, essentially vetting candidates, not all candidates can win under current
rules. Some officially nominated candidates lose elections. Indeed, some candidates officially
designated for government office (which requires initial election to congresses) lose elections. A
growing number of candidates who are not communist party members have competed and won in
elections. A smaller number of government executives nominated by deputies are not official
candidates and win without official endorsement. An electoral victory signifies some degree of popular
support, while losing signifies a problematic relationship with the mass public. At a minimum, the
new rules are a means for the Communist Party organization to gauge popular views about local
officials, diversify the pool from which leaders are recruited, and monitor local leaders. To be sure,
the new rules have not produced radical change. Nor can such an outcome be expected without
further change in rules: no platform of opposition to the Communist Party is permissible, and
competition in elections to people’s congresses is restricted to the township and county levels.
In 1997 and 1998, Jiang Zemin and the NPC proclaimed their support for more popular participation
and more competition in elections to township people’s congresses. The idea was neither new nor
borrowed from the liberal democratic tradition. It emerged from a decade of practical experience
with one of the more controversial political reforms of the post-Mao years: grassroots democratization
in the Chinese countryside, formally approved in November 1987 when the NPC, after over a year of
debate, passed a provisional version of the Organic Law on Village Committees. A final revised
version was passed in November 1998. The law defines village committees as “autonomous mass
organizations of self-government,” popularly elected, in elections featuring choice among candidates,
for three-year terms and accountable to a village council comprised of all adult villagers.
The introduction of popularly elected village committees in 1987 had not been a commitment to
process but a gamble on outcomes by leaders at the political center. It was designed to strengthen
state, capacity to govern in the aftermath of agricultural decollectivization. In the early 1980s, the
people’s communes had been dismantled and replaced with township governments. Land and other
production inputs were divided among peasant households to manage on their own, free markets
were opened, most obligatory sales to the state were abolished, and private entrepreneur-ship was
promoted. The results of these reforms were successful by most economic standards, but disastrous
in their consequences for rural leadership. As villagers gained greater economic initiative and
autonomy, the power of the Chinese party-state to exact compliance was enormously weakened. By
the mid-1980s, village leadership had seriously atrophied. Leaders were enriching themselves at the
expense of the community, and villagers were resisting their efforts to implement unpopular policies.
Violent conflicts between villagers and village leaders had become common. The revitalization of
village committees in 1987 was designed to make the countryside more governable by increasing
accountability. Presumably, villagers would be more responsive to leaders elected from below rather
than those imposed from above as before.
With an average size of about 1,200 people, villages are small communities, where most adults have
lived and worked together for decades—and could, therefore, be expected to know and elect capable
and trustworthy leaders to manage village affairs. Presumably too, newly elected village leaders
could serve as loyal agents of the Chinese party-state, guaranteeing policy implementation, acting as
the “legs” of the township governments above them. Success required village management by leaders
elected in processes featuring broad participation by ordinary villagers, electoral choice, and
transparent procedures.
In 1997 and 1998, when top leaders affirmed the experience of village elections, most villages had
undergone at least three rounds of elections, with enormous local variation in implementation. In
many (perhaps most) villages, the village Communist Party branch controlled candidate nomination,
there was no candidate choice for the key position or village committee director, and voting
irregularities were common. Even in villages that made serious progress—with genuinely competitive
elections, widespread popular participation in candidate nomination, and scrupulous attention to

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