Extending political participation in China: new opportunities for citizens in the policy process

Abstract

Authoritarian political systems are portrayed as offering few opportunities for citizens to participate in politics – particularly in the policy process. This paper’s contribution is to set out new mechanisms that enable Chinese citizens to evaluate government performance, contribute to decision-making, shape policy agendas and feed back on implementation. Based on fieldwork in the city of Hangzhou, we argue that the local party-state orchestrates citizen participation in the policy process, but members of the public nevertheless do have influence. Political participation is widening in China, but it is still controlled. It is not yet clearly part of a process of democratization, but it does establish the principle of citizen rights to oversee the government.

Keywords:

• China
• citizens
• political participation
• policy process

Notes

1. Here, I draw also on Jayasuriya and Rodan (2007) to distinguish authorized and non-authorized forms of participation.

2. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the reasons for these changes, but the work unit has eroded, and so is no longer a prime site for citizens to engage in politics, while technological developments have clearly opened up new sites.

3. We have anonymized our interview sources when citing them in this paper, but details are available on request.

4. The Hangzhou party-state has not introduced direct elections of the city’s leaders or government decision-makers – a key dimension of the political participation identified in the earliest studies of democracies – but it did in 2004 introduced a new, more rigorous and transparent procedure for selecting local officials at the bureau chief level. By 2012, more than 110 posts were open to input by ‘experts’ and local party congress representatives and political consultative conference members, rather than, as in standard practice across China, by the local Party Organization Department. The city’s Party Committee did, however, retain decision-making power over individual posts.

5. Participatory mechanisms adopted in many democracies in recent years have been aimed – much as they have in Hangzhou – at improving policy-making and building political trust; and they have encountered similar difficulties in ensuring participation from across the societal spectrum (see for example Cornwall, no date).

6. ‘Leaders’ evaluations’ are conducted by the department in charge (shangji bumen) of that which is being evaluated. After it was extended to the rural counties and suburban districts, the evaluation system there worked in different proportions, with 65% of the overall score derived from performance against targets, 30% from the social evaluation and 5% from the leaders’ evaluation. A creativity and innovation score contributed a further 5%.

7. The site also channels complaints to Letters and Visits departments that are a longer-standing part of the government designed to handle public complaints and communications. Officials reported that in its online service the response time for citizens registering problems was 5–7 days, that in 2011 there were 3466 web-based service (wangshang fuwu) responses and in 2012, 4911 responses.

8. Many of the programmes aired since December 2010 are available for viewing on these web pages.

9. ‘State Council Decision Concerning Strengthening Administration in Accordance with the Law of Municipal and County Government’. Horsley also notes that the 2008 Urban and Rural Planning law required draft plans to be published for comment for not less than 30 days, and the opinions received to be set out in a report when the draft plan is submitted for approval – though this is after Hangzhou began its Red House Consultations.

10. Manufacturing contributes 44%, and tertiary industries 48.7%.

11. Hangzhou’s four main industries (electronic information, machinery, silk textiles and foodstuffs), make up 60% of the city’s industries and involve mainly small enterprises (Interview 3, 17 June 2011).