Grassroots People's Congress Elections in China, 2011–12

Abstract

Observations reveal that People's Congress elections at the county/district and town/township levels in China in 2003, 2006–07 and 2011–12 were not entirely free and just. There are many loopholes, and they had been fully exploited by the Chinese authorities to control the elections. The problem does not lie in the specific provisions of the Election Law; the fundamental question is that the Chinese leadership has no intention to conduct free and just elections at the grassroots level. Its most important consideration is to control, or to maintain political stability, and this consideration became even stronger in 2011–12 because of the domestic political difficulties.

Keywords:

• People's Congress elections
• Election Law
• independent candidates
• election committees
• human rights and civil society activists

About the Authors

Fan Li is the director and founder of the World and China Institute, which is a non-governmental think-tank in China established in 1993. He has promoted many important political reforms in China, such as the first ever direct election of the township government chief of Buyun town, Sichuan province in 1998, and the famous budget reform in Wenling, Zejiang province in 2005. He has published numerous articles and books on election reform, budget reform, and civil society development in China, in both Chinese and English.

Joseph Yu-shek Cheng is the Chair Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Contemporary China Research Project, City University of Hong Kong. He is the founding editor of the Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences and the Journal of Comparative Asian Development. He has published widely on political developments in China and Hong Kong, Chinese foreign policy and local government in southern China. Volumes on China he has recently edited include: A New Stage of Development for An Emerging Superpower; and The Second Chief Executive of Hong Kong SAR: Evaluating the Tsang Years 2005–2012. He is now serving as the Convener of the Alliance for True Democracy in Hong Kong.

Xuelian Shi obtained his Master's degree from the Sociology Department, Nanjing Normal University in 2007. He has been working as an Assistant Researcher at the World and China Institute since his graduation.

Notes

1 The laws and regulations on elections in China promulgated before 1990 can be found in Research Office of the Office of the NPC Standing Committee (1990).