Rural Elections in China

The following sections are included:

• About the Author
• Contents

As a system that links state and society, the election holds an extremely important position in modern democracy. Elections are a prerequisite for democracy, the first door to the democratic transition, and a key step in democratic consolidation and promoting democratic quality. The democratic political construction in Asia is accompanied by the reform, improvement, and development of the electoral system.

The process of democratization in the rural areas of China was initiated in the early 1980s of last century, and was called the “Villagers’ Self-Government System”. After the reform of rural economy system, the villagers’ self-government system was spontaneously established by peasants to meet the needs of basic level social management, and then was confirmed and authorized by the state. The villagers’ self-government system was a change in political systems in rural areas, and also one aspect of the social transformations in China. It entailed the comprehensive changes of the operation mechanism, management modes, and political activities in the rural society of China. In order to understand the significance of the villagers’ self-government system to the democratization of China, we need to review not only the historical origin and background information of the villagers’ system, but also its critical points and changes of content in the transformation of systems in different periods, by the method of historical institution. This chapter will review the history of the villagers’ self-government system from the perspectives of governance and democracy, and assert that the effective management of countryside space is a practical need in the process of the rise and development of villagers’ self-government system. Meanwhile, democracy shows the value pursuit of villager autonomy. The first section of this chapter investigates the rural society from the founding of People’s Republic of China to the era of reform. The second section tackles the rural economic reform and its influence on grassroots politics, and finally, the third section reviews the process of establishment and evaluation of villager autonomy system.

In the late 1970s, the market-oriented reform was carried out, and greatly changed the closeness of rural areas in the planned economy period. In pursuit of higher incomes, farmers poured into the developed regions to engage in manufacturing and the service industry. The rural–urban immigration had a huge impact on the economical structure and the political order in the rural areas. As there is an obvious difference between the elites and the masses in a demographic structure, the role of the elite is particularly important in a floating population. Besides, there is a strong hero complex in the Chinese culture, namely, an elite complex. The massive outflow of rural elites is an important feature of China’s rural areas over the past two decades. Elite mobility has become an important mechanism for the transfer of capital, technology, knowledge, information, ideas to rural areas, the promotion of rural–urban communication, the integration of village elite resources, and has made great contributions to the development of the rural areas. However, the outflow of elites has also separated the elite resources of the villages, which has negative effects on the development of the rural areas as a whole, including its economic development, political reform, organizational construction and cultural inheritance. In this chapter, we will discuss population mobility, elite outflow and rural governance in a unified framework. Detailed divisions of sections are as follows. The first section briefly introduces the elite theory, the second section discusses the phenomenon of rural elite drain in the migrant workers, and the third section analyzes the influence of elite outflow on rural governance.

The following sections are included:

• The Elite Return: The Election of Democratic Elections
• The “Elite” Non-Elite: The Wrong Way of the Election Game

Village-level democratic elections will inevitably lead to unprecedented integration and differentiation of interests as a procedure, a process, a means, an experiment and practice that have never been seen in this ancient land of China. This means that conflict and rivalry between authority and legitimacy will also be inevitable.

In this chapter, we will analyze the controversy over the authority and legitimacy of village elections, the irregular competition of the candidates and the reasons behind them. We believe that the chaos that has emerged in rural democracy cannot be attributed solely to people’s moral standards. There are economic and social structural factors behind them that dominate people’s behavioral orientations.

In order to ensure the legitimacy and authority of the rural cadres, it is necessary to perfect the village election, to make the villagers’ autonomy fall into place, and to return the power to the people.

The following section is included:

• Index