Is Chinese Democracy Sustainable?

Abstract

DIFFICULTIES WITH CHINESE DEMOCRACYVillage committee elections in rural areas began at the end of the 19805 and spread to the whole of China by 2001. Election reform later expanded in two directions: vertically, so that the direct election experiment was at the township level by 1998; and horizontally in two types of reform, first the allowing, also by 1998, of the election of urban community committees (the residents' committees), and second, the election of members to the local people's congress in the rural areas and in the urban districts in 2003.' This development shows that the process of holding democratic elections has begun in China, which is indeed a historic change, although it is limited to the rather than the government level.1Currently, democracy in China faces many difficulties as more and more conflicts arise: vote-buying is spreading and various types of election disputes are increasing. The whole process is at a standstill and even shifting into reverse. Some explanations are required as to why the situation has developed this way.First, there are more and more conflicts appearing in the basic power structure in rural areas, e.g. between the party secretary and the elected village chief; between the township level of government and the elected village committees; and between the departments of the party organization and civil affairs' departments.3 These conflicts exist almost everywhere in the rural areas.Secondly, electoral procedures are often problematic. The use of mobile ballot boxes and proxy votes is popular, ballot secrecy is not assured in the polling stations, and there is no law to deal with judicial disputes during and after elections.4 China has taken the first step, from no elections at all to its first experiments with Now it needs to take the second step and improve its procedures, but it seems that this won't be easy.Thirdly, democracy is still at the level of the masses. It has not reached the level of government officials and higher-level deputies, and there is no timetable for further reform.5 Electoral committees face challenges where farmers find themselves supervising government officials, at least in the township, because the latter are susceptible to corruption.Finally, local governments-especially at the township and county levels-make democratic control difficult. They rig rural elections by placing their allies as village committee chiefs and serving their own interests-collecting money from farmers and selling village lands-which mocks the notions of self-governance and grassroots democracy. Farmers who do not obey may be fined, jailed, arrested, or even killed.6SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT VS. CONSOLIDATIONCurrently, studies of democratic development elsewhere in the world focus on issues of consolidation. This refers to countries with newly established democratic systems that are not solid and may be unstable. At issue is whether democracy is sufficiently well established so as to not return to authoritarian rule. An established democracy is one where there is at least a national competitive election-which would justify the use of the term electoral democracy-even if the state system does not yet qualify as a liberal democracy.7 Consolidation requires at least the retention of national competitive elections. The state of democratic development in China is such that it has never reached the point of national elections; elections have occurred only at the level and have not reached the government level, let alone the national level. In view of this situation, China may now best be described as a partial electoral democracy.The key question in the current situation relates to the sustainability of democracy in China. Can Chinese democracy be developed from the to the government level? Can election procedures be improved to be more free and fair? …