Elections, democratic values, and economic development in rural China

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 16, Issue 50, 2007, Pages 25-45

  Zweig, David ^a   Fung, Chung Siu ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; ELECTION; GOVERNANCE APPROACH; RURAL POPULATION; VILLAGE;

ANHUI; ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; HEILONGJIANG;

EID: 33847708645     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670560601026728     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. On rapid rural industrialization, see Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes Off (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
2. For a more general overview of rural reform, particularly in Jiangsu Province, see David Zweig, Freeing China's Farmers: Restructuring Rural China in the Deng Era (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997).
3. For an excellent study of 'peasant burdens', see, Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lu, Taxation without Representation in Rural China: State Capacity, Peasant Resistance, and Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
4. Data from the Fourth Research Institute of the Public Security Ministry show a jump in the number of protests from 9,709 in 1993 to 32,000 in 1999. Li Lianjiang in his seminar, 'Do Villagers Trust the Central Government', Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 30 October 2002. By 2005, there were over 86,000 urban and rural protests.
5. Lianjiang Li and Kevin O'Brien, 'The struggle over village elections', in Merle Goldman and Roderick MacFarquhar, eds, The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
6. Wang Zhenyao, 'Village committees: The basis of China's democratization', in Eduard B. Vermeer, Frank N. Pieke and Woei Lien Chong, eds, Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 239-256.
7. On China's democratic development see Suzanne Ogden, Inklings of Democracy in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
8. Kenneth A. Bollen, 'Issues in the comparative measurement of political democracy', American Sociological Review 45(2), (1980)
9. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
10. and Larry Diamond, 'Economic development and democracy reconsidered', in Gary Marks and Larry Diamond, eds, Re-examining Democracy (Newbury Park: Sage, 1992).
11. Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 311.
12. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, 'Modernization: Theories and facts', World Politics 49, (January 199)
13. and Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (London: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
14. Charles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, 'Endogenous democratisation', World Politics 55 (July 2003), pp. 517-549.
15. John B. Londregan and Keith T. Poole, 'Does high income promote democracy?', World Politics 49 (October 1996), pp. 1-30.
16. Guillermo A. O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
17. See Amy Epstein, 'Village elections in China: Experiments with democracy', in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, ed., China's Economic Future: Challenges to US Policy (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), p. 418
18. and Tianjian Shi, 'Economic development and village elections in rural China', Journal of Contemporary China 8(22), (1999), pp. 425-442.
19. Jean C. Oi and Scott Rozelle, 'Elections and power: The locus of decision-making in Chinese villages', The China Quarterly no. 162, (June 2000), pp. 513-539.
20. Hu Rong, Cunmin zizhi jiagou xia de cunmin weiyuanhui xuanju: Fujian sheng 1997 nian ge'an yanjiu [Village Elections within the Framework of Village Autonomy: Research on Case Studies from Fujian Province ], City University, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 1999.
21. Most of the funding for this research came from the United States Institute of Peace, with further support coming in the form of a Direct Allocation Grant, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, with funds coming from the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong.
22. According to the 'haixuan' system, anyone possessing their democratic rights can run for office. Then, through a series of ballots, the number of candidates is cut until only two or three remain. These candidates compete for Village Director.
23. See Anhui tongji nianjian, 2000 [Anhui Statistical Yearbook ], p. 589,
24. and Zhongguo tongji nianjian, 2000 [China Statistical Yearbook ], p. 332.
25. Heilongjiang tongji nianjian, 2000 [Heilongjiang Statistical Yearbook ], p. 439.
26. Either the villages selected were not representative of the county overall, which we doubt, or reported income by the local governments is quite different from that reported by the statistical yearbooks.
27. In most villages, villagers gave mixed reports as to whether or not the election had been democratic. Some villagers, perhaps women or migrant workers, simply did not know what types of procedures had been used in the most recent elections. So any village where over 65% of the 20 informants said that there had been multi-candidate elections was considered as having undergone a multi-candidate electoral process.
28. O'Brien and Li cite estimates by the US State Department, Shi Tianjian's nationwide survey, and their own survey, with most estimates falling between 10 and 30%. See Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, 'Accommodating "democracy" in a one-party state: Introducing village elections in China', The China Quarterly no. 162, (June 2000).
29. Robert A. Pastor and Qingshan Tan, 'The meaning of China's village elections', The China Quarterly no. 162, (June 2000), pp. 490-512.
30. Villagers in the same village had very different memories of how the election had transpired. So we used a 50% rule; if more than 50% of villagers reported nomination forms that fell into the more democratic category, we scored the village as MDN. In five villages, nine or ten villagers reported that their village had used 'aixuan', but 10-11 people in the same village said that either they did not know, or that some local organization had nominated the candidates. Our view is that if 50% of villagers did not know what system was used then it was not a well functioning democratic system and therefore we scored it as a less democratic nomination system.
31. For an in-depth analysis of these two cohorts, see David Zweig and Chung Siu Fung, 'Do new institutions create new politics? The impact of "haixuan" or direct nominations for village elections on elite and villager attitudes', paper presented at the International Symposium: Villager Self-government and Rural Social Development in China, Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Carter Center, 2-5 September 2001, Beijing.
32. MLA refers to the Mantel-Haenszel Test for Linear Association and is a good statistical test of linear relationships of Likert scales.
33. Oi and Rozelle, 'Elections and power', p. 537.
34. It is worth noting that 41% of villagers in wealthier villages felt that there had been no change. Therefore, if their previous elections had been relatively competitive, this finding says nothing about the real level of competition.
35. Part of these results may be due to the fact that one of our Heilongjiang counties was significantly richer than the Anhui counties, but had held its elections between two and three years earlier. Therefore, the county affect may explain this difference. However, there was very little variation in voting rates among the four counties, suggesting that wealth, rather than locality, had some influence. Similarly, more of Heilongjiang's villages reported having speeches than Anhui's.
36. The relationship between these two variables was significant at the 0.003 level.
37. Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).
38. O'Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism.
39. Leigh A. Payne, Brazilian Industrialists and Democratic Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
40. While a smaller percentage believe that it 'really speeds up economic development' (16% versus 18%), many more think that it 'speeds up development' (62% versus 47%). The Mantel-Hanzsel Measure of Linear Association was 0.02.
41. Of entrepreneurs, 76% believe that the charter has a 'big influence' or 'some influence' versus 65% for regular villagers. MLA = 0.00.
42. Baogang He, who studied elections in wealthier parts of China, particularly Zhejiang Province, found that 15-20% of village directors were entrepreneurs. See Baogang He, 'Village elections, village power structure, and rural governance in Zhejaing', American Asian Review XX(3), (Fall 2002), pp. 55-89.
43. Agglutination occurs when elites accumulate power on more than one dimension, i.e. political and economic power. See Robert D. Putnam, Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975).
44. In 1998, there were only three elections in the villages we sampled and in two of them the director of the villager committee was elected for the first time.
45. According to Jakobson, in 1997 only 2% of village directors nationwide were also party secretaries. Linda Jakobson, lecture at the Division of Social Sciences, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2000. Perhaps our two Heilongjiang counties were unique. Recent reports, however, suggest that the CCP favors fusing these posts again because competition between these officials has created political instability. Personal communication, Kevin O'rien, January 2004, Hong Kong.
46. Jakobson, lecture at the Division of Social Sciences.
47. Unfortunately, we used the term 'cadre' - rather than village director - in the questionnaire, so it is unclear what was entailed in the term 'cadre'. If they held a village post before being elected village director, they might already have been a party member when they ran for village director.
48. O'Brien and Li, 'Accommodating "democracy" in a one-party state', p. 481.
49. Chi-square test, p = 0.017.
50. Nevertheless, it is worth reporting that 53.1% of villagers in MDN villages and 57.7% of villagers in LDN villages selected 'don' know' when asked who decides how the funds are spent in the village.
51. Bernstein and Lu, Taxation without Representation in Rural China.
52. Lianjiang Li, 'Elections and popular resistance in rural China', China Information XV(2), (2001).
53. We report this finding, even though it is not statistically significant. But given that we only have a total of 60 cases in Anhui, the value of the MLA is quite suggestive.
54. Despite our small sample size of 60 villages, the finding was significant at the 0.08 level.
55. A conference at George Washington University, organized by Bruce Dickson, entitled 'Surveying China', addressed many of these issues, including the difficulty of finding good and reliable Chinese co-researchers, the high costs of surveys, getting local-level support for carrying out the survey, and problems of measurement.
56. Bjorn Alpermann, 'The post-election administration of Chinese villages', The China Journal no. 46, (July 2001), pp. 45-67.
57. Selecting 'don't know' is a common choice in surveys in the PRC. In fact, one can study these responses to explain who is more likely to select this option. In many cases it reflects a lack of political awareness. See M. Kent Jennings, 'Missing data and survey research in China: Problems, solutions, and applications', paper prepared for Conference on Surveying China, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 9-10 June 2000.
58. Even local cadres expressed strong support for the villagers' right to petition higher-level officials if they disagreed with 'local policies'. The question, though, is how they defined 'local policies'.