Rural Democracy in China

Transcription

1 Rural Democracy in China

2 Also by Baogang He The Democratisation of China The Democratic Implications of Civil Society in China Nationalism, National Identity and Democratization in China (coauthor with Yingjie Guo) Multiculturalism in Asia (coeditor with Will Kymlicka) The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China (coeditor with Ethan Leib) Federalism in Asia (coeditor with Brian Galigan and Takashi Inoguchi)

3 Rural Democracy in China The Role of Village Elections Baogang He

4 RURAL DEMOCRACY IN CHINA Copyright Baogang He, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data He, Baogang, 1957 Rural democracy in China / Baogang He. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (alk. paper) 1. Local elections China. 2. Democratization China. 3. Local government China. I. Title. JS H dc A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October

5 For a Democratic China

6 Contents List of Tables Acknowledgments ix xi Chapter 1 Introduction 1 PART I: Dimensions of Village Democracy Chapter 2 Development of Democratic Procedures 23 Chapter 3 Village Citizenship 41 Chapter 4 Competitiveness of Village Elections 53 Chapter 5 Voting Behavior and Political Participation 67 Chapter 6 Village Representative Assembly 87 PART II: The Limits of Village Democracy Chapter 7 Village Elections and Village Power Structure 103 Chapter 8 Women and Village Elections 121 PART III: The Shape of Village Democracy Chapter 9 Village Elections and Township Leaders 141 Chapter 10 Political Economy of Village Democracy 155 Chapter 11 Kinship and Village Elections 177

7 viii Contents PART IV: Prospects of Chinese Democratization Chapter 12 From Village to Township Elections 197 Chapter 13 Conclusion 213 Notes 233 Bibliography 243 Index 265

8 List of Tables 2.1 How the Village Election Committees Are Formed How the Initial Candidates Are Nominated How the Final Candidates Are Decided The Number of Candidates Who Ran for the Position of Village Head in the Latest Election Surveys on Democratic Culture and Village Elections Scores Assigned to Survey Questions Participation Indices Related to the Number of Elections Voters Participated In Participatory Activities by Villagers in Zhejiang, Participation in Election-Related Activities in Rural China, The Reasons of Your Vote for Village Head Multiple Regression Coefficients Agenda of Villager Representative Meetings in Shuangqiao Village, June December Age Distribution of the Village Committee Members in Laofangqiao Township, Strategies of Village Heads for Reelection Postelection Relationship between Village Head and Party Secretary Do Party Secretaries Feel Challenged by the Fact that Village Heads Are Elected by the Voters? Dual Power Structure in Village Three Models of Party Election What Activities Did You Take Part in During the Recent Election? How Well Do You Know about The Organic Law of Village Committee Elections? 124

9 x List of Tables 8.3 How Well Do You Know the Village Head? Evaluation of Your Voting Evaluation of the Latest Election The Effects of Training on Women in Qiangxi Participation Index in Different Types of Economy The Desire to Continue to be Village Chief Local Determinants of Variations in Kinship Influences Summary of Local Elections Experiments The Index of Political Participation by Rural Social Stratification 222

10 Acknowledgments This book is to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Provisional Organic Law of Village Committee promulgated on November 24, 1987, a milestone in Chinese rural democratization. Many people have helped in the production of this book through their encouragement, critical discussion and suggestion, and through reading and commenting on portions of the manuscript. I am particularly grateful to more than 200 ordinary villagers, villager leaders, and local officials whom I interviewed; 20 students and teachers in Zhejiang University who helped me to conduct the surveys in 1998; a dozen of Chinese researchers on rural China who taught me many insightful things; Wang Zhaoyao, Fan Yu, Zhang Chenfu, Wang Jinhua, and Wang Shihao in the Ministry of Civic Affairs who offered extensive assistance; Zhang Jinming, the former party secretary of the Shizhong district committee, Suining city, and the current deputy party secretary of Ya An city, Sichuan province for her time and support in August 1999 and Special thanks are due to Professor Lang Youxing who helped me to organize and carry out the survey, and his extensive assistance to this project, and Professor Wang Chunguang who read and commented on the whole manuscript and brought me the 2005 national survey data. I would like to thank Andrew Nathan, Larry Diamond, David Goodman, Bruce Dickson, Chas W. Freeman, Wang Gungwu, Jean Oi, Thomas Heberer, Gunter Schuber, Chih-yu Shi, Edward Friedman, Jonathan Unger, Younian Zheng, and Merle Goldman for their comments and discussions. I am very appreciative of several anonymous referees from publishers and journals, in particular, from Palgrave publishers, whose professional comments and suggestions have benefited me a great deal in improving the quality of this manuscript. Thanks also to Guo Xiajuan, Xiang Hui, Christine Standish, Becky Shelley, Eric Zhang, Yingjie Guo, Aw Beng Teck, Vic Wu, Eilidh Campbell St. John, and Shupin Mei for their useful help and various assistance.

11 xii Acknowledgments I also feel much indebted to the School of Government at the University of Tasmania, the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, and the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University where I have written and revised the manuscript; to the Australian Research Council for large and small grants that have enabled me to gain new information on current developments in China; and to the International Forum for Democratic Studies, at the National Endowment for Democracy that offered intellectual and technical support to complete the first draft. Finally, I would like to thank Suxing, Melinda, and Andrew for their daily support. Thanks are also due to the following journals and publishers for allowing me to reproduce some of my previous publications that have been revised substantially in this book: Village Elections, Village Power Structure and Rural Governance in Zhejiang, American Asian Review, vol. 20, no. 3, Fall, 2002, pp Village Citizenship in China: A Case Study of Zhejiang, Citizenship Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, May, 2005, pp A Survey Study of Voting Behaviour and Political Participation in Zhejiang, Japanese Journal of Political Science (Cambridge University Press), vol. 7, no. 3, 2006, pp Are Village Elections Competitive? in China s Challenges in the Twenty-First Century, ed., Joseph Y. S. Cheng, Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2003, pp Kinship, Village Elections and Structural Conditions in Zhejiang, in Damage Control: The Chinese Communist Party in the Jiang Zemin Era, eds., Wang Gungwu and Zheng Yongnian, Singapore: Times Media Private Limited, 2003, pp