Village Elections and the Rise of Capitalist Entrepreneurs

Abstract

This study examines a series of four direct elections and their impact in an industrialized Chinese northern village. It finds that direct elections empowered villagers and the new economic elite to remove the old, entrenched and corrupt leadership. However, the few capitalist entrepreneurs who dominated the elections and the new leadership neither abided by the rules of political competition nor tried to govern democratically. On the other hand, villagers did not feel empowered to participate in the governing process despite the establishment of democratic institutions. After initial enthusiasm for direct elections, many villagers either became politically apathetic or felt helpless and nostalgic for the return of a benevolent authoritarian leader. This study finds that after four rounds of direct elections, little progress had been made in democratic elections and governance. This was mainly because the new economic elite did not want to be checked by democratic rules and institutions while villagers had not learned to use democratic institutions to hold their elected leaders accountable.

Notes

*Yusheng Yao is associate professor in the History Department of Rollins College. His research interest is mainly concerned with China's modernization, in particular, its modern education reform and rural reconstruction. He would like to thank Rollins College for its financial support of this research. The author can be reached by email at [email protected]

^1. Kevin O'Brien and Rongbin Han, in their recent assessment of the state of the field, express most scholars' view that ‘Election procedures in rural China have improved greatly over the past 20 years …’; see Kevin O'Brien and Rongbin Han, ‘Path to democracy? Assessing village elections in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009). Most recently, Kerry Brown continues to question the possibility of decent elections in the one party system and argues that the CCP, including its central and local leadership, will never tolerate genuine competitive elections for fear of losing control; see Kerry Brown, Ballot Box China: Grassroots Democracy in the Final Major One Party State (London and New York: Zed Books, 2011).

^2. For a summary of various theories of the empowerment school, see O'Brien and Han, ‘Path to democracy?’, pp. 368–369 and the notes 48–56. For another summary, see also Zongze Hu, ‘Power to the people? Villagers’ self-rule in a Northern China village from the local point of view', Journal of Contemporary China 17(57), (November 2008), pp. 612–613 and the notes 2–9.

^3. See O'Brien and Han, ‘Path to democracy?’, p. 376.

^4. Kevin O'Brien is the first to suggest that relatively well-off villages with a history of good leadership are more likely to implement competitive elections; see Kevin O'Brien, ‘Implementing political reform in China's villages’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 32, (July 1994), pp. 33–60. Recently, Rong Hu confirms this view in his study of 40 villages in Fujian by arguing that ‘village-level economic development is crucial for the implementation of competitive elections’; see Rong Hu, ‘Economic development and the implementation of village elections in rural China’, Journal of Contemporary China 14(44), (2005), pp. 427–444. Susan Lawrence differs in her case study of a Hebei village by arguing that mismanaged and poor villages are more prone to democratic change; see Susan V. Lawrence, ‘Democracy, Chinese style’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 32, (1994), pp. 61–68. More recently, scholars have challenged both views. Jean Oi and Scott Rozelle find a negative relationship between the level of economic development and competitiveness of village elections: the wealthy and industrialized villages are less likely than poorer, agricultural villages to have competitive elections; see Jean C. Oi and Scott Rozelle, ‘Elections and power: the locus of decision-making in Chinese villages’, The China Quarterly 162, (2000), pp. 513–539. Following Amy Epstein, Tianjian Shi and others, however, identify a curvilinear relationship between economic development and interest in political participation, that is, neither the rich nor the poor, but the middle income villages tend to have competitive elections; see Amy Esptein, ‘Village elections in China: experimenting with democracy’, in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, China's Economic Future (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997); and Tianjian Shi, ‘Economic development and village elections in rural China’, Journal of Contemporary China 22, (1999), pp. 425–442. More recently, David Zweig and Chung Siu Fung share this view, though they further argue that middle and upper-middle income villagers tend to have democratic values and not to be satisfied with economic development and governance in the village; see David Zweig and Fung Chung Siu, ‘Elections, democratic values, and economic development in rural China’, Journal of Contemporary China 50, (2007), pp. 25–45.

^5. O'Brien and Han, ‘Path to democracy?’.

^6. Melanie Manion and Schubert Gunter, political scientists and veterans in the field, call for such a shift when assessing the state of the field in the forum organized by Journal of Contemporary China; see Melanie Manion, ‘How to assess village elections in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009), pp. 380, 382; and Schubert Gunter, ‘Studying “democratic” governance in contemporary China: looking at the village in not enough’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009), pp. 387–388.

^7. Hu, ‘Power to the people?’, p. 630.

^8. These findings generally agree with O'Brien and Han's assessment of China's village elections and governance—the discrepancy between the two (O'Brien and Han, ‘Path to democracy?’); see Yusheng Yao, ‘Village elections and redistribution of political power and collective property’, The China Quarterly no. 197, (2009), pp. 126–144.

^9. I stayed for four days in D Village in June 2006 and interviewed, formally and informally, over a dozen villagers including the old Party secretary, the old village director, and the current village director and associated director. I found villagers' account most useful for reconstructing the election story. I have kept in contact with the three informants by phone since my visit.

^10. The official estimate of 1–3% of all elections by Wang Jinhua of the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2008 was much too low. Grassroots officials and scholars consider it an increasingly common problem. In a recent survey of township officials by Jiaozhou City Party Committee of Shandong Province, 80% of respondents reported that bribery elections were increasing and took on more flexible and diverse forms. Jiaozhou City Party Committee of Shandong Province, ‘Dui liangwei huanjie zhong “huixuan” wenti de diaocha yu fenxi’ [‘Investigation and analysis of the bribery election problem in the election of the Party branch committee and village committee’], Party Reconstruction in Jiaozhou, (2010), available at: http://www.jzdj.gov.cn/llyj14.htm. In my research on a village near Beijing, I learned that over 31 of the 34 villages in the township practiced bribery election in 2010.

^11. Xin Ming, ‘Yige daxuesheng yian zhong de huixuan’ [‘Vote buying in the eyes of a college student’], Chinese Youth Daily, (2 November 2009).

^12. Wu Sihong, Cunmin weiyuanhui xuanju zhong huixuan de neizai luoji [The Inner Logic of Bribery Elections in the Elections of the Village Committees], (2010), available at: http://www.chinaelections.org/NewsInfo.asp?NewsID = 177661.

^13. On the Chinese Internet, blogs by villagers and articles by journalists can be found exposing rampant bribery elections in the amount of millions because the competing candidates could expect much higher returns: Bai Jinfu of Aoxiaoying Village of the Yongledian Township of Tongzhou in Beijing, admitted to the media to have spent 1.5 million in vote buying in the election for the office of village director. He lost to Du Youjun, who had spent, according to him, two million; see Jinghua Times, (27 November 2007). Villagers from Zhaijiazhuang of Sanhe, Hebei Province, exposed the fact that the new village director spent three million in vote buying in the 2009 election: ‘It is an open secret that every Party secretary and village director for the nearby demolished villages received the grey income over ten million’, available at: http://bbs.news.163.com/bbs/shishi/182894266.html.

^14. This was, of course, not just a problem in this village or of the rural population in general. The 17th Party Congress (2007) called on, for the first time, the whole nation to raise the citizenship awareness. Historically, the ability of Chinese people, in particular, of villagers, was and still is a debating point.

^15. In his study of vote buying in eight villages in Zhejiang Province, Wu Sihong points out that although democratic governing institutions have been established in most villages and are comprehensive in form, they do not function effectively as there are loopholes in finance and accounting system. See Wu, Cunmin weiyuanhui xuanju zhong huixuan de neizai luoji.

^16. For a summary of the institutional approach see Hu, ‘Power to the people?’, p. 613. As examples of this approach, see Fubing Su and Dali Yang, ‘Elections, governance, and accountability in rural China’, Asian Perspective 29(4), (2005), pp. 125–157; and Bjorn Alpermann, ‘Institutionalizing village governance in China’, Journal of Contemporary China 18(60), (June 2009), pp. 397–409.

^17. O'Brien and Han (‘Path to democracy?’) indeed have identified vote buying as ‘a new problem’, but that does not change their positive assessment of China's village elections.

^18. The differences between the two villages are also obvious: the contradictions between villagers and elected cadres in D Village are smaller in scale and intensity because its privatization has been more thorough and its reallocation of the village property—contract land and residential lots—was fairer.

^19. This confirms the conclusion I made in my 2009 article. Villagers there were more angry and politically engaged because the collective property continues to be encroached upon under the elected leadership; see Yao, ‘Village elections and redistribution of political power and collective property’.