Village Self-Government and Representation in Southwest China

Abstract

Villages in China are, according to recent law, “self-governed” by villager committees, whose members are elected by villagers and held accountable to villagers and villager representative assemblies. Previous studies have focused on the institutions of self-government, assuming that, if unimpeded, they will enhance both direct villager participation in governance and the representation of villager interests. In contrast, this article focuses on local understandings and ideals about political roles and relationships, as constructed through everyday political claims and practices. The article draws on qualitative research in four villages in Yunnan, southwest China. In these villages, neither cadres nor villagers used the word “represent” to characterise the role of members of village government. Furthermore, villagers could not explain what villager representatives do or what “representative” in the title “villager representative” means. This leads us to ask: How do village residents conceive the responsibilities of villager representatives and cadres? Is the lack of reference to “representation” merely a linguistic issue, or do they have a different conception of villager-cadre and villager-representative relationships? In addressing these questions, this article aims to enrich our understanding of village self-government in China and contribute to theorising about political representation.

Keywords:

• Village self-government
• representation
• rural China
• Yunnan
• everyday politics
• political claims

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers, as well as to Andrew Walker, John James Kennedy, Sally Sargeson, Colum Graham, Yang Lichao and Misha Petkovic, for their critical comments and advice on this article. The article is based on research funded by the Australian Research Council (DP120104353).

Notes

¹ The Organic Law was first implemented on a trial basis in 1988, before being made permanent in 1998. It was further revised in 2010.

² The two authors together visited these villages for a total of five weeks between April 2012 and January 2013, and the second author made a repeat visit to all but one village for a total of four weeks in August–December 2013. In each village, we interviewed the village Party secretary, head of the villager committee and one or two other committee members. We also visited a sample of three sub-village hamlets (xiaozu – the production team under the former collective system) and in each one, interviewed the hamlet head, at least three villager representatives and at least 14 ordinary villagers. In addition, we sat in on a few formal cadre and cadre-villager meetings, participated in numerous meals with cadres, and witnessed several interactions between cadres and individual villagers, who had come to them with requests or complaints.

³ Formally speaking, “cadres” are state officials and, because village government is not part of the state, there is no such thing as “village cadres” (cun ganbu). Villagers, however, use the term to refer either to all those appointed or elected to positions of governance in the village or hamlet (except villager representatives), or more narrowly, to those receiving a regular payment for their work in governing the village or hamlet. In the villages under study this includes the village leaders – the head of the villager committee and the village Party secretary (each of whom is paid a salary by the township government) – and the hamlet heads (who receive a small stipend from the township government). It does not include other members of the villager committee or village Party branch, deputy hamlet heads or accountants, hamlet Party heads or ordinary Party members, or villager representatives. In this article, we adopt the broader definition of the term “village cadres” but focus most attention on village leaders and hamlet heads.

⁴ Recent studies of Chinese village self-government include those by Chan (2003), Li (2003), He (2007), O’Brien and Han (2009), Liu (2010), Schubert and Ahlers (2012) and Sun et al. (2013). Among these, He (2007) is one of the most sanguine about the establishment of fully-functioning institutions of self-government, while Chan’s (2003) study of villager representative assemblies is particularly negative.

⁵ He (2007, 8) writes, for example, that village democracy enables citizens to participate in village decision-making “either through direct democratic mechanisms, such as all-villagers assemblies, or through representative institutions, such as elected village committee members and village representative assemblies.”

⁶ This cannot be explained in terms of ignorance of the Organic Law (although most cadres had only a vague knowledge of the Law, and with only a single exception, none of our villager interviewees had heard of it). The Organic Law does not mention the verb “to represent.”

⁷ A few recent studies have discussed the emergence in rural China of concepts of democracy, rights and citizenship (see Brandstädter and Schubert 2005). Others have discussed the extent to which deputies to the people’s congress at township level and above conceive their role as being to “represent” their constituencies (see Manion 2014). To our knowledge, however, ours is the first examination of the concept (or lack of concept) of representation in the context of Chinese village government.

⁸ Article 15 of the Organic Law states: “For the election of a villagers’ committee, candidates shall be nominated directly by villagers who have been registered for election” (Organic Law 2010).

⁹ Between 2008 and 2014, severe drought across southwest China resulted in a particular focus on the building and repair of water facilities.

¹⁰ He uses the distinction between “mobilisation” and “distribution” models to explain differences in the role of the villager representative assembly. Here, we use it as a partial explanation of broader patterns in village governance, including the roles played by village leaders and hamlet heads, as well as villager representatives.

¹¹ Alpermann describes a similar situation in cotton-growing districts in Hebei, where village leaders served as state agents, mobilising farmers to fulfil state quotas for cotton production (Alpermann 2001, 59–66).

¹² In the 2000s, there was a national policy of encouraging an overlap in personnel between the villagers’ committee and Party branch (jiaocha), and occupancy of the positions of Party secretary and village head by a single person, termed “yijiantiao” or “two posts on one set of shoulders” (He 2007, 119; Schubert and Ahlers 2012). In Yunnan, in the first and second rounds of village elections in 2000 and 2003, county governments were required to meet high targets for yijiantiao, but since then, these requirements have been relaxed (Interviews with Yunnanese cadres, 2012).

¹³ We take this term from Walker (2008, 88–90), who finds that localism is a defining element of the rural constitution in Northern Thailand and, specifically, a focus for villagers’ evaluation of electoral candidates. However, some of the meanings attached to localism in Northern Thailand are different from those in Yunnan.

¹⁴ Most interviewees regarded completion of junior secondary school to be the minimum level of schooling required to be a village cadre.

¹⁵ Article 23 of the Organic Law states that “a villagers’ assembly shall review the annual work report of the villagers’ committee, evaluate the performance of the members of the villagers’ committee, and have the power to cancel or modify any inappropriate decision made by the villagers’ committee or the villagers’ representatives’ assembly.” Chapter 5 (Articles 29–36) includes further details on the “democratic management and democratic supervision” of villagers’ committees (Organic Law 2010).