With the ‘household contract responsibility system’ introduced in the Chinese countryside in the late 1970s, farmers began to produce for their families. As production was decentralized, the collective-oriented organization of the People’s Communes became outdated.
The earliest villagers’ committees (VCs) emerged in the Guangxi Autonomous Region in 1980–1. Formed without the knowledge of the local authorities, these organizations were created by village elders, former cadres and community-minded villagers. The intention was to address a decline in social order and a broader political crisis as production brigades and teams stopped functioning at the grass-roots level. Within months, local officials had reported this development to the central government. The National People’s Congress (NPC) leaders encouraged experiments with this new form of organization.
In 1982, VCs were written into the constitution as elected mass organizations of self-government (article 111). In contrast to the relationship between the commune and production brigade or production team, the newly restored township—the lowest level of government—does not lead the VC but only exercises guidance over it. Another difference is the introduction of direct election by all eligible voters. In 1987, the Provisional Organic Law of Villagers’ Committees was passed, setting out general principles for direct elections to VCs and defining the tasks and responsibilities of the VCs. Implementation of the law, including the enactment of detailed regulations, was left to the provincial and lower-level authorities. The quality of elections and overall implementation varied considerably, and after ten years perhaps only 25 per cent of the more than 658,000 villages (for the end of 2002) in China had experienced direct elections in full accordance with the law.
In 1998, the NPC made the Organic Law permanent. The law has clarified and improved some aspects of the prescribed election procedures and strengthened the rules on transparency and popular control of VCs. The permanent law is seen by many as a political and legal consolidation of the village election process, but its full implementation remains a challenge—perhaps even more so after the introduction of more demanding standards, for instance, in relation to secret polling booths and the direct nomination of candidates. The quality of elections across the country still varies considerably.
The VC members are elected for three years, with no limit on the number of terms for which a person can be re-elected. The VCs usually consist of between three and seven members, one of whom is chair and one or two vice-chairs. Although there is variation from province to province, VCs generally oversee all the administrative matters of a village, including budget management, public utilities, dispute resolution, public safety, social order and security, health issues and local business management. A large village can consist of more than 10,000 people, while small ones might only have several hundred. The ‘average village’ has 1,000–2,000 inhabitants.
VCs report to the Village Assembly or the Village Representative Assembly. As the former meet only once or twice a year, the latter, composed of 25–50 people from the village and selected by Villagers’ Small Groups, play a greater role in decision making and in the supervision of the VCs. A Village Election Committee administers village elections.
Village elections have now been held in all 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. By 2003, the provinces of Fujian and Liaoning, two front-runners in this regard, had completed eight and seven elections, respectively, and 19 provinces had held between four and six elections. At least one province held its first village elections as late as 2000. There is no single election day for all VC elections across the country. During a province’s designated election year, the counties and townships within the province together decide the election days for the villages within their jurisdictions.
Each election adheres to the same basic framework. The first step in the process is the registration of voters, which is handled by the Village Election Committee. A list of registered voters must be prepared and publicly displayed 20 days prior to the election. Voters are allowed to challenge the registration lists.
Except for those who have been deprived of political rights, all those aged 18 or above enjoy the right to vote and to be elected without regard to ethnicity, race, sex, profession, family background, religious belief, level of education, property or period of residence in the community. One important challenge is the large number of voters whose residence registrations are in their ‘home village’, but who live and work a long distance away, often in a major urban area. It is difficult or impossible for most such voters to get back to their village on election day. At the same time, they cannot attend the elections in the cities in which they work and reside. Therefore they cannot actually exercise their right to vote.
Following voter registration, candidates are nominated directly by villagers. In most provinces, the requirement is to have only one more candidate than there are seats to be filled as chair, deputy chair, and ordinary members. In recent years, nominations in some provinces have been organized through villagers attending either a meeting of the Village Assembly or a meeting of the Villagers’ Small Group, while the latest development in other provinces is to have no pre-election nomination. In these areas, voters receive either a blank piece of paper or a blank ballot paper with only the different positions indicated above the relevant columns. If the election fails to produce a new committee or to fill all positions it de facto becomes a first-round election, and a run-off election follows.
The final election must be direct. The use of secret ballots and polling booths (or rooms) is mandatory in most provinces. There are three voting styles: (a) mass voting, where all voters go to a central voting place in the morning, vote, and remain there until the end of the count; (b) individual voting throughout the course of the day of the election; and (c) proxy or absentee voting, or ‘roving boxes’. Most of the provinces use mass voting. The ballot papers used contain names of candidates listed under the post for which they are standing; and the voting is done by the voter marking the names of the candidates he or she wishes to elect. The voter can mark as many candidates as there are posts (one chair, one or two vice-chairs, and a number of committee members) in the village. For an election to be considered valid an absolute majority of eligible voters must cast their ballots and winning candidates are required to get 50 per cent of the vote plus one. When no candidate receives a majority, a run-off election is held within three days. In run-off elections, candidates are only required to receive 33 per cent of all votes cast. Winners take up their positions immediately.
Village elections are important in that the election law mandates the basic norms of a democratic process—secret ballot, direct election and multiple candidates (even though their numbers are very restricted). Other elections in China have yet to implement these norms. The progress made in relation to VC elections has raised expectations as to whether and when direct elections will work their way up from the village to the township, county, and even higher levels of government. Each round of VC elections also strengthens local capacity to administer electoral processes.
An assessment of the significance of China’s village elections has much to do with the question whether such ‘limited democracy’ can lead to genuine democracy. There are different ways of assessing how democratic elections are. The three universal criteria of free, fair and meaningful elections are appropriate terms of reference. China does not meet any recognized standards of free and fair elections in choosing its national parliament and local councils, and in many cases elected village leaders do not exercise as much authority as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretaries do. However, just because the village elections are not fully free or fair, and some VCs do not command complete authority, it cannot be concluded that they are completely unfree, unfair, or meaningless. Elections should not be evaluated against some absolute standard but rather viewed as positioned on a democratic continuum.
The VC elections have produced a ripple effect as village CCP branch elections in some cases have invited ordinary villagers to cast a vote of confidence, and some experiments with elections of township government leaders have taken place. China’s democratization now appears to require that the top leadership’s political decisions find an echo at the grass roots. After two decades of continuously improved direct elections at the village level, elections at higher levels of government appear technically feasible; the question is whether and how there will be further change in the direction of democratization.
