Chinese Village Democracy the Organic

Chinese Village Democracy

The Organic law on Village Elections was passed by the national People's Congress in China in December 1987. Western and Chinese observers and specialists in political science or sociology still debate over the reasons the Chinese government had when adopting such a solution that was supposed to sustain democracy in the rural life in China as an established fact. A closer look at the various aspects of life in the villages throughout the country previous to the implementation of the Organic law will show some of the reasons that might have determined the regime to adopt such measures against its deepest convictions, according the socialist ideology. According to some observers, like Anne F. Thurston the process of reducing the collective farming till it was completely wiped out of the rural map of China, started in the mid seventies, provided the conditions for a void of power that increased the potential of chaos. The villages were susceptible of falling in the wrong hands of opportunists, usually people interested only in their own well fare and that of their close circles, so called cliques.

Consequently, the Chinese government might have adopted the Organic Law that was destined to reform the economic and social life in the rural areas by allowing the villagers to elect their village leaders directly in open, free, fair elections, in order to reestablish order, regain control and find new resources to successfully implement the state policies, such as taxation, birth control and other unpopular policies. According to the new law, the Villagers Committees were to be directly elected by the villagers and be separate entities from the Township Government. Until 1990, the law was poorly implemented, especially that the Tiananmen events delayed such manifestations of any measures destines to reinforce democracy by its two powerful aspects: distinction between the state and the society and the right to self-governance. The huge economic changes in China during the last two decades produced important changes at the level of society and inevitably the forming of social groups with different interests that incline the balance toward a pluralistic society. The degree of separation between society and the state proposed by many Chinese scholars towards the late 1980s was put in practice in the form of grassroots politics in the 800.000 villages in China in the early 1990s and there are significant indicators that it will take the reform up to the next level of the city life..

The degree of success or failure of the organic law in terms of teaching the democracy to the peasants, as some prominent personalities of the regime hoped its implementation in the Cines countryside would mean, is yet to be determined. According to numerous surveys, studies, papers, articles, case studies and books of Chinese and Western scientists, specialists in politics, sociology and anthropology that have researched the real aspects of self-governing in the Chinese villages after the implementation of the Organic law, its effects were significant and not to be underestimated in the light of political reform. According to Yijiang Ding, at the beginning of the 1980s, the regime that had among its leaders Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang acted in the spirit of a reform, attacking the principle of centralism. Ding sees the change in views when it came to socialist ideology determined by the shift in the functions of the state. The state's interests that were equivalent to those of the society, were directed, according to the Leninist doctrine, to fighting the enemy class. Once the regime officially declared that there was no enemy class left to fight, its main role had to change. The ideological debates among scholars were accompanied by the economic reform started in the 1979. The state began to work more towards the management of society's affairs and less in the spirit of dictatorship. The economic changes brought by the gradual withdrawal of the state from the economic life were also manifested in the rural economy. Before the early 1980s, every decision in the village life was taken by the centre. The villagers were allowed to seed only what the leadership decided it was best for them at some point, regardless that those leaders were not even aware of the climatic conditions and the real necessities down in the fields. Once the economic reform started, the decision making was left in the hands of those who were implicated in the village life, closer to peasants and their real needs. According to Ding, "a realm of social and economic life that is not directly controlled by the state has developed, which in turn has created conditions for the development of autonomous grassroots communities and horizontal social groupings." (Ding, pag 12).

The complexity of social life in the rural areas of China is huge. After having merged into bigger villages, there were approximately 800.000 villages with an average of 1000 people, by the late 1980s. The implementation of the Organic law for the village self-government varies greatly from one region to another and even from one village to another.

According to the surveys conducted by John James Kennedy in 34 villages, in the Shaanxi Province of China, between October and November 2000, in the villages reporting to have had democratic elections, according the law, the degree of villagers' satisfaction with the results of the election process depended first of all on the methods used to nominate candidates. Kennedy indicated three methods of selecting the candidates for the available positions: by direct nominations of the villagers, nominations made by the party local representatives and nominations made by the township government.(Kennedy, 2001, pag 465). The percent of farmers who reported having had candidates nominated by the first method described was the largest: 35. It was followed by 21%that reported having had to vote among candidates selected by the party locals and 26% of those questioned reported having had candidates appointed by the township government. (Kennedy, 2001, pag 466). Among the conclusions Kennedy reached after the survey, based on the fact that "the most open the nomination process, the higher the level of uncertainty," the results showed that the amount of satisfaction regarding the election process was directly dependent on the degree of openness of the elections. This indicates a certain degree of political awareness. Kennedy's conclusion, after having conducted a complex survey that linked the political process of choosing a village leader and the villagers' Committee to variables like economic development, party membership, presence of clans in a village, land ownership, types of land etc., was that: "villagers in this sample display a high level of voter sophistication. They can identify the difference between real and cosmetic elections. Moreover, villagers are able to separate economic factors from political institutions and evaluate each on their own merits."(Kennedy, 2001, p 482) Kennedy's findings support that the experiment the Chinese regime started in the late 1980s tends to rich one of its declared goals, namely the process of teaching the peasants the lesson of democracy.

On the other hand, some skeptics argue that the democracy in the Chinese village is far from being on the right way to its accomplishment since the data is still based on researches and studies that are restricted to a few small areas in the Cines countryside and respondents are often offering contradictory answers. Jens Kolhammar is writing in his case study Democracy Outmanoeuvred: Village Self-governance in China about the numerous facts that make the implementation of the Organic law of Villages Committees first passed by the end of 1987 and then revised after a decade to be far from taking democracy on a superior level. Conclusions that China is on a path towards changing its system on a national scale, starting with its almost one billion farmers are put under the magnifying glasses of studies conducted in areas where the grassroots politics are malfunctioning or not functioning at all. Kolhammar indicated a survey among 8,302 peasants, conducted by O'Brien and Li that showed how almost a half of the respondents expressed disbelief in the fairness of the electoral methods used in their villages. The author of the article published this year on the China Elections & Governance Website writes in conclusion that: "the village election reform is lacking in many areas and that many rural dwellers are losing faith in the reform.[7] Consequently, the quality of the village elections is not certain and it seems that much effort is needed before all the villages in the Chinese countryside have genuine self-governance."(Kolhammer, 2008)

Kolhammer's main concern when it came to the role of the Organic law in spreading grassroots democracy all over the country consisted in the degree of knowledge of the "actual rights"(Kolhammer, 2008) they, as electors had, according to this law. This logic seems similar to those analyzing the degree of manipulation in the spiritual leaders of a community who take advantage of the high percentage of illiterates who cannot read the holy books and thus can be easily manipulated in believing anything the religious leaders find in their best interest and not what the holy books actually teach. This rationale may prove correct to some degree, but only in those areas where the villagers have no means of communication between villages and thus no way of exchanging opinions and finding out about irregularities and breaking of the law. Kolhammer is pointing out that the declared official role of the organic law of Village Committees is only going to be put in practice after the villagers will be aware of the right they have according to it and act accordingly.

There is no possibility that one can draw the conclusion that peasants in most villages in China are not aware of their rights in terms of electing their village leader and Village Committee. The degree of knowledge in this sense may vary, but a country that has experienced huge economic changes after the death of Mao could not have remained immobile to significant social and political changes. The political structure is still the same as in the 1970s, but national think tanks are oriented towards discussing and challenging the Leninist ideology in favor of the Marxist idea of socialism and it seems more and more likely that the Marxist ideology is used as a way to express ideas that are often in contradiction to socialism as an expressions of unity and centralism. O'Brien was the first who sustained the idea that efficacy in the political process made the voters in the rural areas became aware of their power in changing leaders who were not acting in the best interest of those who voted for them and in the spirit of the central authority's derectives. Starting from this point, Lianjiang Li wrote an article entitled the Empowering Effect of Village Elections in China after having conducted interviews in villages in China and a survey of 400 people from 20 villages in T. county of Jiangxi Porvince (Li, 2003, pag 652). The results of the survey supported the author's opinion that since free and open elections will always motivate people be become involved in the electoral process in order to articulate their interests and moreover to help change the leaders who failed doing it before the elections: "we may expect that as free village elections continue and spread, more villagers will become more active in village policies." (Li, 2003, p 660)

Ding sees the process of developing the grassroots politics like a natural manifestation of the economic changes inside China and of the external factors like China's opening to foreign investors and the changes that took place globally, namely in Eastern Europe and the neo-liberalism trend in Great Britain and America. The idea of separation between society and state was sustained by many scholars in China one the economic reform started to take place and the theories developed were based on the Marxists views of a society in relationship with the state, but enjoying the right to follow its own interest separate from those of the state, to a certain degree. The various scientists, specialists in politics and sociologists promoted new concepts like difference in interests and multiple social groups instead of unity. The organic law of Villages committees was implemented and revised after ten years on the background of significant change even in the ideology expressed on official channels by those at the top of the pyramid. One of the most prestigious organizations in China, the Chinese Social Sciences expressed its disbelief in the idea of unity at a societal level in China, in 1986, at the Conference on Political Reform. The idea that society underwent major changes and groups were beginning to form once the market gained a degree of freedom was accepted as consequence of the economic reform. The government was beginning to withdraw from being directly implicated in the life of the citizen and the people developed new needs when the decision making in the interests of a community was no longer coming from the centre. Two consequences made the regime look for a way to avoid chaos in the rural areas: the need to find the right ways to impose the unfriendly state policies, the risk of undergoing a void of power. The representatives of the government that were until appointed by the regime and were leading the villages were replaced by new organizations of self-government. (Ding, 2002, p. 76)

The process of self-governing and formation of grassroots politics did not appear from nothing, because the regime wanted to make experiments on hundreds of millions of villagers regardless of their real interests. The economic reform took place not only in the industrial regions of China, but also in the countryside. He collective farming disappeared by the late 1970s and the state directives on economic policies in rural activities, along with it. but, in 1985 the local government continued to appoint the village leaders. Pen Zheng, on of the most prominent leaders of the regime in 1990 was a key figure in the implementation of the Organic law that gave the villages in China the right to self-governance and the opportunity to built grassroots democracy. The Chinese culture, tradition and the political system in China at that moment were elements that made democracy sound slightly different from the western meaning of the concept. Since the beginning of socialism in China, the regime has promoted the idea that democracy was an intrinsic part of the Chinese state and thus, enjoyed by the Chinese civil society. but, an inclination toward what Aristotle meant by "democracy" only appeared when the organic law was passed.

Recently, in an interview Antony Saich gave to Doug Gavel and Molly Lanzarotta, where he was expressing his views on the importance of the Olympic Games being held in Beijing this year from the point-of-view of the Chinese leadership, Saich mentioned China's plans to move between 300 and 500 million peasants from the countryside into the urban areas, by 2020. (Saich, 2008) if they such a huge task will be successfully accomplished, that could mean that the ex-villagers will also bring along their knowledge of self-government. This will be an entirely different matter, altogether since the communities they will suddenly find themselves in will have totally differ in proportions and in structure, but their first notions of democracy will remain and could be adapted and used in the new environment.

On the other side, professors like Daniel Kelliher are more skeptical in regard to the prospect of democracy spreading from the grassroots through the whole country. After reviewing the economic and social factors from the Chinese debate point-of-view on the subject of village self-governance, Kelliher concludes that: "Much of the evidence[...]falls on the negative side, especially for the near-term"(Kelliher, 1997, p. 84) Starting with the revised Constitution in 1982 and then the four years of negotiations between those who were in favor of Peng Zhen's ideas of implementing a law that gave the villages the right to self-governance and those who opposed it from the government, and passing through the different stages and degrees of implementation, and revision of the Organic Law of the Villagers Committees, over two decades and in different regions in China, Kelliher finds the supreme argument in favor of his opinion that looking from the point-of-view of the debate between Chinese officials and specialists, democracy in China has a small chance to spread from the grassroots political institutions:..."the opposition is formidable. Granted, many opponents are lowly township and county officials, who seem a poor match against the mighty apparatus in Beijing calling for self-government. But strategy of resistance is the hardest kind to guard against: feigned compliance" (Kelliher, 1997, p. 84).

So, Kelliher finds that the local government, taking advantage of the fact that villagers are actually ignoring the rights they are granted by the organic law and that the lack of a democracy culture makes them unaware of what competitive elections mean, can simulate that they have successfully implemented the law at the local level, while actually conducting elections where the candidates are nominated by appointment of the government township and whose results completely certain, are as before the adoption of the law. Another and even more dangerous threat to the democratic institution of free elections Kelliher found after reviewing the Chinese debate over the subject of village self-governing is the fight against the concept from inside the party itself.

Despite Kelliher's skepticism in regard to a real opportunity for democracy to spread from the grassroots politics Jonathan Tomm argues that "increased consciousness of democratic rights among peasants and efforts to improve the representativeness of township cadre selection constitute important signs of democratic changes both outside and inside the Communist Party."(Tomm, 2006, p. 86). Tomm mentions the fervent debates and opposition before and after the Organic law was implemented and actually adopted at the local government level, but he is also pointing out that since its passing in 1988 and revision ten years later, the law providing villages the right to self-governance not only was put used to organize elections at a local level in most of the country, but it also set a precedent in spreading to an urban area. It is true that in July 2001, the Central Committee annulled the results of the open elections held in Buyun in 1998, by declaring the results unconstitutional.(Tomm, 2006, p. 87) Tomm argues that in spite the fact that the Party continues to elect the township leaders by appointment and not by the suffrage of the people, the Party is interested in selecting candidates that are popular with the people in order for the central government to use them as means of imposing less its popular policies and have easier control over society, at a micro level. Tomm also points out the example of two important urban centers Shenzhen and Beijing where more independent and self-nominated candidates succeeded to reach the ballot in the elections of people's congresses up until recent years, completely under the control of the party.

In the light of the evolution of politics in the countryside in China, after the Organic law of villagers committees was adopted and used as a legal basis for the election of the village leadership, some observers draw the conclusion that the solution the regime found most convenient at a moment where chaos could have emerged out of a void of power that followed the dissolution of collective farming proved so far effective for most of the rural areas in China. Ding cites Peng Zhen's words regarding the regime's declared intensions when adopting such measures like village self-government, in his book Chinese Democracy after Tiananmen: " put the concept of democracy in everyone's mind."(Ding, 2002, p.80). Ding's conclusion is that "the regime leadership appers to be not only fully aware of the democratic implication of village self-government, but deliberately promoting it as a Chinese version of Democracy." (idem) Like, Kelliher, Ding is also treating the issue of debate over the efficacy and the role plaid by the village-self-government, inside the central government. The opponents of Peng Zhen views argued that the peasants were too ignorant of politics and therefore completely unprepared to be taught a lesson of democracy they were supposed to pass over to their children and to their fellow countrymen. The political interests of the centre varied greatly from those of the local governments. The later were reluctant to the new law and its implementation for fear of loosing their control over the villages they were leading or trying to lead as representatives of the regime. Ding is speculating that the new form of village self-government was even a form a building a grassroots organism that was destined to fight the previous local government that was no longer representing the state policies in regard to the village affairs, but more its own political and economic interests. (Ding, 2002)

Ding considers that the democracy lesson was well taught in the villages where the peasants had the chance of being part of real, free and fair elections. He points out that some of the farmers "have been known to impeach corrupt members of villagers' committees and force them to resign between elections" (Ding, 2002, p. 84) That is in Ding's view an indubitable proof that the peasants not only were capable of understanding the lesson of free elections but also to use it in their favor and that of their community. Kevin O'Brien and Anne F. Thurston share the opinion that the villages where the self-government process was successful were most of them enjoying good economic conditions. Susan Lawrence, on the other hand, is sustaining the opinion the poor economic conditions could make the peasants willing to profit from a new law that allows them to be implicated in the decision making and make use of their voting rights to make things change in the direction they see right, or at least better than the way their village is economically going before the implementing of the self-governing regulations. Ding's enthusiasm in coming to the conclusion that the grassroots politics started once the organic law was implemented was the avalanche that would engulf the whole country eventually is moderate. He is emphasizing that the observers and scientists that conducted studies, researches and surveys could have covered only small parts of the country's immense rural area and points out the actual percentage of villages in China where there were open and competitive elections, according to the stipulations of the organic law, is not available. In some cases, some results found in case studies conducted by impartial observers were annulled in terms of positive effects of the self-government, by further observations of other observers who found out that the rightfully elected leader, by direct and fair vote of the farmers did not resist in his new position and had to give it up in favor of the old government officials who immediately recovered their old positions. Hence, the revision of the organic law of villagers' committees, in 1998 came as a result of the need to create the proper institution that would legally support the results of fair elections.

After having conducted a series of studies and researched the Chinese countryside after the implementation of the organic law, in 56 villages, in 1990, Melanie Manion reached the conclusion that "the democracy that is slowly growing in Chinese villages is likely to have implications as profound as the changes in economic organization that created the demand for it." (Manion, 1996, p. 745)

Hok Bun Ku has a different view on the changes brought by the political reform in the Chinese Village, starting with the dissolution of the collectivist markets and especially after the Tiananmen. In his ethnographic book: Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Resistance he expresses his disbelief in the reasons the Chinese regime has when deciding to let the villages have free elections for the village leader and the villagers' committees, on a regular basis. His conclusions are based on his researches in the village where his father was raised, named Ku in the book. His study is conducted between 1993 and 1996. The author expresses right from the introduction of his book his conviction that the changes the Chinese village underwent in the second decade of the economic reform and in the first years after the villages were allowed by law to have self-government are much less beneficial for the villagers than what the propaganda machine of the state is still presenting nationwide and to the world. His conclusions rely on the common sense observations regarding the impossibility of peaceful and successful coexistence between ideological contradictions, liberalization of the market brought by the economic reform and authoritarian government. Such a hybrid is in Ku's view condemned to failure. After the first wave of enthusiasm, the villagers lost their trust in the real potential the economic reform and the grassroots politics offered them to lead a better life in terms of immediate economic level-up. Ku presents a peasant that is nostalgic for the past, even if that wasn't perfect either, but it seemed to provide better for the commoner. The paternalistic relationship during the Mao era looked suddenly more appealing than the new era of liberalization where healthcare and education where no longer guaranteed and provided by the state and it depended only on a questionable personal economic growth that depended on too many factors. Ku is describing a picture equivalent to a wild capitalism where the new rich become richer and the gap becomes enormous between the rich peasants and the majority, the rest of them who are even poorer. He is also presenting the differences between the rural standard of living and the life of those in the cities as another proof that the benefits of democracy refuse to show up at a national scale. In conclusion to his interviews with some peasants who lived through the Mao era and were "beneficiaries" of the article 111 from the 1992 Constitution and the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees, Ku concludes that "the grassroots democratic practices, in villagers' eyes, lack substance. Some village leaders are still appointed by the local government. Many statements in the constitution are a mere formality. For example, the villagers' representative congress does not exist in Ku village. This implies that the villagers have no right to dismiss the village cadres and that the decisions about public affairs are made by the cadres, not by the villagers' representatives." (Ku, 2003, p. 121).

As described by the scientists who conducted case studies in different parts of rural China, the differences in applying the organic law are depending on numerous factors and one ethnographic study in one village is certainly not eligible to drawing conclusions at a national scale. As Kennedy pointed out in his survey in 34 villages chosen by random, in six counties, between October and November 2000: "80% of the respondents reported competitive elections." (Kennedy, 2001, p. 463). The variables that may conduct to differences villagers' attitude and response to the political reform are also consisting in economic factors. Kennedy's control variables were: "village's mean household income," "village's mean land per capita," "percentage of arable village land," "county dummy variables" ('distance to major urban centers"), "distance to the county seat," "distance to the township government offices" and finally "the number of relevant clans in the village." (Kennedy, 2001, p 470). All these variables that are significant in the way the villagers feel the influence of the grassroots politics on their lives cannot be taken into consideration when studying one single village in the mountains in North China, simply because there are no results to compare with, regardless of how rich in details the study was.

Jean C. Oi sees the threat in the success of the democracy lesson translated in the well fare of the villagers consisting in the corruption of the officials. The political reform is from her point-of-view an expression of the regime's intentions to find a viable solution to counterattack the negative effects of the decentralization and dismiss of the collective farming. Another question Oi raises is related to the contradictions between the increased level of control township government was given at one point, when the state tried to overcome the negative effects of corruption at the local level of village officials, while maintaining and reinforcing the autonomy of the villages. The matter of who really has the power, the authority in the village and who is taking decisions for the village affairs are still to be answered shows the author. However, she tends to incline the balance more on the optimistic side due to the Central Document 14 the Chinese government issued in 2002 "which mandates that all who want to be a village party secretary must first stand for elections to the village committee." (Oi, 2003, p.7)

Xiaobo Lu is also seeing a redefinition of the relationship between villagers, local leadership and central government necessary in order to solve the numerous problems peasants in large regions of central, south and west China encounter especially due to the heavy taxation. He indicates the crisis the appeared between the peasants and the local government and brings Li Changping's article in Newsweek to reinforce his opinion on the matter. Li Changping writes about his conviction that China faces a crisis today (in 2003) due to a heavier taxation imposed on the rural population compared to that on the urban people. Lu's observations concluded that the central authority had more credit in trust than the local officials considering "the center's siding with peasants was an important fact, contributing to the emergence of a center-peasant alliance in which both sides targeted abusive local authorities. The center sought to lighten peasants' burdens, presenting itself as a "clean and upright king," as opposed to the corrupt "lords" (Lu, 2003, p. 11) Lu emphasizes the necessity for further developing of right democratic institutions and new policies that will help regulate the relationship between state and civil society and make way for democracy to be a tool people will have the know how to make use of in order to make things change for the better.