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WHAT DEMOCRACY MEANS IN CHINA 

AFTER 30 YEARS OF REFORM 

ROUNDTABLE 

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

MAY 22, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov 

(II) 

CO N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening statement of Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Staff Director, CongressionalExecutive Commission on China ........................................................................ 1 

Grob, Douglas, Cochairman’s Senior Staff Member, Congressional-Executive 

Commission on China .......................................................................................... 2 

Cheng, Li, Director of Research and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, John 

L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution ............................................. 4 

Manion, Melanie, Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science, University 

of Wisconsin-Madison .......................................................................................... 6 

Liu, Yawei, Director, China Program, The Carter Center ................................... 9 

Dickson, Bruce J., Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, 

The George Washington University ................................................................... 13 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

Cheng, Li .................................................................................................................. 26 

Manion, Melanie ...................................................................................................... 35 

Liu, Yawei ................................................................................................................ 37 

Dickson, Bruce J. ..................................................................................................... 40 

(1) 

WHAT DEMOCRACY MEANS IN CHINA AFTER 

30 YEARS OF REFORM 

FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2009 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA, Washington, DC. 

The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:33 a.m., 

in room 628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Charlotte OldhamMoore, Staff Director, presiding. 

Also present: Douglas Grob, Cochairman’s Senior Staff Member; 

Anna Brettell, Senior Advisor; and Toy Reid, Senior Research Associate. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHARLOTTE OLDHAM-MOORE, 

STAFF DIRECTOR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Good morning. It’s a pleasure to have all 

of you here, a lot of frequent attendees and some new ones, which 

is really lovely to have new faces in the crowd. 

My name is Charlotte Oldham-Moore, and on behalf of Chairman 

Byron Dorgan, thank you for coming today to our, I think, fifth 

roundtable of the 111th Congress. Today we will be examining 

‘‘What ‘Democracy’ Means in China After 30 Years of Reform.’’ 

I’m going to turn it over to my colleague, Doug Grob, and please 

begin. 

STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS GROB, COCHAIRMAN’S SENIOR 

STAFF MEMBER, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION 

ON CHINA 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much, and welcome, everybody. On 

behalf of Cochairman Sandy Levin, I would very much like to welcome you here today, and appreciate your attendance at today’s 

event. 

The topic of today’s roundtable is democratic governance in 

China, an issue of considerable debate both in China and outside 

of China. Chinese leaders have said that China needs to improve 

its institutions of democracy. The question we ask today is: how do 

China’s leaders define democracy, especially given China’s oneparty state, and, what are the democratic practices that China’s 

leaders have instituted, or attempted to institute, in China in the 

last three decades, especially in recent years? 

China’s leaders describe China’s political system as a ‘‘Chinese 

socialist political democracy’’ that includes ‘‘political consultation’’ 

and ‘‘elections’’ for local legislatures at the county level and below 

2 

and village-level committees. At the same time, China’s leaders assert that China will never adopt Western-style democracy, nor a 

separation of powers system, free press, or extensive elections. 

China’s leaders uphold China’s one-party system, and scholars 

and experts, both in China and outside of China, continue to utilize 

the concept of authoritarianism to describe China’s political system. However, in recent years, some have described China’s 

authoritarianism with various adjectives such as ‘‘soft,’’ or ‘‘deliberative,’’ or ‘‘resilient.’’ So how are we to understand this variety 

of perspectives, and what are the implications, ultimately, for U.S. 

policy? 

Those are the general questions we ask our distinguished panelists to address today from a number of different vantage points. Dr. 

Cheng Li will open with general remarks on the official Chinese 

conception of democracy and how it differs from the West, and then 

discuss in more detail so-called inner-party democracy. Dr. Melanie 

Manion will discuss local people’s congresses’ elections, which only 

take place at the level of counties and townships in China, and concepts of representation. She’ll discuss the meaning of representative democracy in mainland China today. Dr. Liu Yawei will discuss 

developments in local village committee elections and their impact, 

and will provide commentary on the future prospects for electoral 

democracy in China. Dr. Bruce Dickson will speak about the relationship between economic and political reforms and the prospect 

that Chinese entrepreneurs may be agents of political change. 

Before I turn it over to Professor Cheng Li, I’d like to introduce 

each of our panelists in greater detail. Cheng Li is Director of Research and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. 

Thornton China Center and the William R. Kennon Professor of 

Government at Hamilton College. He’s the author and editor of 

‘‘Rediscovering China: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform,’’ as well 

as the author of ‘‘China’s Leaders: The Next Generation, Bridging 

Minds Across the Pacific: The Sino-U.S. Educational Exchange,’’ 

and ‘‘China’s Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy.’’ He’s also the principal editor of the Thornton Center Chinese 

Thinkers series published by the Brookings Institution Press, and 

we are truly honored to have you with us today. 

Also to my left, Professor Melanie Manion, Professor of Political 

Science and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Professor Manion studied philosophy and political economy at Peking University in the late 1970s and was trained in Far Eastern 

studies at McGill University and the University of London, and 

earned her doctorate in political science at the University of Michigan. 

She is the recipient of numerous research awards, most recently 

from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, 

and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School. Her 

publications include work on the Chinese bureaucracy, grassroots 

democratization, and the political economy of corruption and good 

governance in China. Her current research examines the ongoing 

transformation from descriptive to substantive representation in 

Chinese local congresses, and we are very pleased to have you with 

us today. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. That’s very impressive. Okay. Off we go. 

3 

Mr. GROB. And to my right, Professor Yawei Liu is Director of 

the Carter Center’s China Program. He’s been a member of numerous Carter Center missions to China monitoring Chinese village, 

township, and county people’s congress deputy elections from the 

period stretching from 1997 all the way up to 2006. He’s written 

extensively on China’s political developments and grassroots democracy. He’s the founder and editor of China Elections and Governance, which can be accessed online at www.chinaelections.org 

and chinaelections.net. It’s a Web site sponsored by the Carter Center on political and election issues in China from 2002 forward and 

it’s an outstanding resource. Professor Liu taught American history 

at Georgia Perimeter College from 1996 to 2008. He earned his 

B.A. in English Literature from Xian Foreign Languages Institute 

in 1982, a Master’s degree in Chinese History from the University 

of Hawaii, and a Ph.D. in American History from Emory University. We are really very privileged to have you with us today. 

Mr. LIU. Thanks. 

Mr. GROB. And finally, also to my right, Professor Bruce Dickson, 

is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the 

George Washington University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His current research examines how economic 

reforms are changing the Chinese Communist Party’s control over 

China’s political system, its relations with society, and especially 

its relations with the emerging private sector. In short, he is looking at whether economic reforms are rejuvenating the party or 

weakening its authority. Professor Dickson is the author of several 

books, including ‘‘Wealth Into Power: The Communist Party’s Embrace of China’s Private Sector.’’ He is also the author of ‘‘Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects 

for Political Change.’’ He is also the author of ‘‘Democratization in 

China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties.’’ So, we 

are extremely fortunate, Bruce, to have you with us today as well. 

This is a fantastic panel. I will not say anything further, and turn 

the floor over to Cheng Li for his remarks. 

STATEMENT OF CHENG LI, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND 

SENIOR FELLOW, FOREIGN POLICY, JOHN L. THORNTON 

CHINA CENTER, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 

Mr. LI. I would like to applaud the CECC for hosting this roundtable discussion on political changes in China. The conventional 

wisdom in the West is that since the 1989 Tiananmen incident, 

China has made progress only in the realm of the economy. Many 

China watchers believe that despite—or because of—China’s 

economic transformation, the Communist regime has been able to 

resist genuine political reforms. This belief, however, overlooks 

several significant socio-political dynamics that are building momentum for further political openness. An understanding of these 

Chinese political dynamics and experiments is critically important 

for the United States, as such knowledge will help us formulate 

better policy options. If our vision is narrow, our options will be inadequate. 

In the next 10 minutes, I would like to discuss three issues: the 

first one is a question that is frequently asked: Is the Chinese official conception of democracy similar to that of most people in the 

4 

world, especially those in the West? Second, I want to outline some 

new and far-reaching socio-political forces that can contribute to 

democratic development in China. And third, I argue that an evolution is taking place in the Chinese political system, especially regarding leadership politics. 

First, is the Chinese official conception of democracy similar to 

that of most people in the West? The answer is not simple. Let me 

answer it by making some observations. Even those who are most 

optimistic about the potential democratization of China do not expect the country to develop a multi-party system in the near future. Chinese leaders and public intellectuals have every reason to 

argue that the People’s Republic of China’s [PRC] version of democracy will, and should, have its own unique features. After all, British democracy, Australian democracy, Japanese democracy, Indian 

democracy, and American democracy all differ from each other in 

some important ways. 

Chinese leaders clearly have widely different views of what democracy is. On one hand, Chairman of the National People’s Congress Wu Bangguo recently stated that the Chinese political system 

is democratic and the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] will never 

give up one-party rule. This kind of reference is what Andrew Nathan calls the ‘‘label of democracy for practices that are anything 

but.’’ 

On the other hand, Premier Wen Jiabao consistently advocates 

for the universal values of democracy. He has defined democracy 

in largely the same way as many in the West would. ‘‘When we 

talk about democracy,’’ Premier Wen said, ‘‘We usually refer to the 

three most important components: elections, judicial independence, 

and supervision based on checks and balances.’’ 

Premier Wen’s emphasis on universal values of democracy reflects new thinking in the liberal wing of the Chinese political establishment. He likely represents a minority view in the Chinese 

leadership, but like many other ideas in China during the past 

three decades, what begins as a minority view may gradually and 

eventually be accepted by the majority. 

Now let me move to the second issue: new and far-reaching economic and socio-political forces in present-day China. Let me briefly mention three such forces, the first is the new and ever-growing 

middle class, the second is the commercialization and increasing diversity of the media, and the third is the rise of civil society groups 

and lawyers. These new players are better equipped to seek political participation than the Chinese citizens of 30 years ago. 

Let me use the commercialization of the media as an example. 

I grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. At that time, 

the whole country only had a couple of TV stations, a few radio stations, and a handful of newspapers. In the mid-1970s, most people 

in China believed that official media outlets, such as People’s 

Daily, contained only lies. At the time people joked that the only 

thing published in the newspaper that could be believed was the 

date it was published! Even the weather forecasts were manipulated so that they would be in line with the political needs of the 

regime. 

Today, things are quite different. There are over 2,000 newspapers, more than 9,000 magazines, about 300 radio stations, and 

5 

350 TV stations in the country. They, of course, do not all tell the 

same stories. Corruption, the lack of government accountability, 

and industrial and coal-mining accidents have been among the 

most frequent headlines in the country in recent years. 

Now, my third and final point: Political dynamics in the Chinese 

leadership. China is a one-party state, but the leaders of this ruling 

party are not a monolithic group with the same values, outlooks, 

and policy preferences. I argue that the Chinese leadership today 

is structured by the checks and balances between two informal 

major coalitions or factions. I call it a ‘‘One Party, Two Coalitions’’ 

formula. 

One coalition is called the ‘‘elitists’’ and the other the ‘‘populists.’’ 

These two camps represent two different socio-economic classes and 

different geographical regions. Elitists represent the interest of the 

coastal region—China’s ‘‘blue states’’—entrepreneurs, the middle 

class, and foreign-educated Chinese nationals—known as the ‘‘sea 

turtles’’—while the populists often voice the concerns of the inland 

region—China’s ‘‘red states’’—and represent the interests of farmers, migrant workers, and the urban poor. The Chinese leaders call 

this new political dynamic ‘‘inner-Party democracy.’’ At present, 

this ‘‘One Party, Two Coalitions’’ practice is neither legitimate nor 

transparent—although many taxi drivers in Beijing are able to tell 

you which leader belongs to which faction. But this inner-Party 

competition will not remain stagnant. Its dynamic nature will probably inevitably make political lobbying somewhat more transparent, factional politics more institutionalized, and elections more 

genuine. In the long run, legitimate competition may be expanded 

so that citizens can seek representatives in the government, contributing to a Chinese-style democracy. 

In conclusion, let me make it clear that the Chinese political system is still constrained by its one-party monopoly of power, lack of 

independent judiciary, and media censorship. The Chinese government has a poor record in human rights and religious freedom. 

Political participation through institutional means remains very 

limited. Yet, the ongoing political and intellectual discourse about 

democracy in the country, the existence of a middle class, commercialization of the media, the rise of civil society groups, the development of the legal profession, and checks and balances within the 

leadership are all important, contributing factors for democratic 

change in any society. In all these aspects, China is making significant progress. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Li appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF MELANIE MANION, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC 

AFFAIRS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 

Ms. MANION. I’m going to be talking about the local congresses 

or local legislatures. I’ll call them congresses. 

From the 1950s through the 1980s, American scholars and policymakers easily and appropriately dismissed these people’s congresses of elected representatives in mainland China as rubber 

stamps. In recent years, however, without challenging the Communist Party monopoly, the Chinese congresses have become sigVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
6 

nificant political players: they veto government reports, they quiz 

and dismiss officials, and they reject candidates selected by the 

Communist Party for leadership. The liveliest congresses are found 

not at the center of power in Beijing, nor in provincial capitals, but 

below in the cities, counties, and townships. 

The new assertiveness we see in the local congresses is not a 

grassroots movement. It was set in motion by rules that were designed and promoted by authoritarian rulers in Beijing, so understanding what has and has not changed in these local congresses 

is a window on the officially acceptable meaning of representative 

democracy in mainland China today. 

So my argument this morning, in the next 10 minutes, is that 

congressional empowerment exemplifies a difficult, risky, strategic, 

and partly successful Communist Party effort to strengthen 

authoritarianism by opening up politics to new players, giving 

them procedural status in the political game, and accepting losses 

in particular instances in order to win the bigger prize of authoritarian persistence. 

It is a difficult effort. It’s a difficult effort because a legacy of congressional irrelevance cannot be easily erased in the minds of ordinary voters and local party and government officials. It’s a risky 

effort. It is a risky effort because credibility requires that the effort 

go beyond authoritarian cheap talk. 

But the regime certainly does not want to encourage runaway democratization in the form of new democratic parties or too many 

independent candidates. It is a strategic effort. It is a strategic effort 

in the sense that it is designed not to promote liberal democracy, 

but to strengthen authoritarian rule with more responsive political 

institutions under the guardianship of a single Communist Party. 

Finally, the effort is only partly successful. Local congress representatives do see themselves as substantive political players with 

electoral legitimacy, not the congressional puppets of the Maoist 

era. This is especially the case in congresses at lower levels. Popularly elected congress representatives speak and act the new language of voting districts, constituents, constituent interests. They 

help their constituents with private matters. They work to privatize local public goods, and they see this as their most important 

responsibility, in surveys we’ve conducted. 

They see their second most important responsibility as electing 

government leaders. This is a quasi-parliamentary system. In electing government leaders, local congresses are not the simple stooges 

of local Communist Party committees as they were in the past. In 

nominating candidates for government leadership, the Communist 

Party committees can no longer treat the congresses as reliable voting machines. 

When local Communist Party committees fail to take local interests into account in nominating their candidates for leadership, 

these Party committee candidates can, and do, lose elections. 

Again, this is especially the case in congresses at lower levels. 

At the same time, and despite official voter turnout figures of 

over 90 percent, reliable survey evidence indicates that very high 

proportions of ordinary Chinese know little or nothing about local 

congress candidates on election day, say they didn’t vote in the 

most recent congress election, and can recall nothing their congress 

7 

representatives have done in the past term. Most alarmingly for 

the Chinese authorities, these proportions have increased, not decreased, over the past 15 years. 

In short, if local congress representatives now think and act as 

agents of their constituents, it is not because ordinary Chinese voters see themselves as principals. Put another way, if representative 

democracy is working, most ordinary Chinese do not yet see it that 

way. 

To understand these different perspectives it is useful to understand what has and has not changed in the rules. Now, let me first 

summarize a few important unchanged features of Chinese representative democracy. First, direct electoral participation by ordinary Chinese is restricted to the lowest congress levels. Only 

township and county congresses are elected in popular elections. 

Above the county level, elections only involve congress insiders. 

Each congress is elected by the congress below it. This reflects an 

elitist notion of guardianship that is both Leninist and traditionally 

Chinese. 

Second, congresses are large, unwieldy, they meet infrequently, 

and most representatives are amateurs with neither the time nor 

material resources for congressional work. The working congresses 

are the much smaller standing committees, but not all standing 

committee members at all levels work full-time for the congresses, 

and there are no standing committees at all at the lowest congress 

level. These large, amateur congresses reflect a Marxist view that 

only by continuing to work on the front line, at the grassroots, can 

representatives forge a meaningful relationship with their constituents. 

Finally, and not least of all, a single Communist Party monopolizes political power. Competing political parties are banned. This 

is important in at least two ways. Communists numerically dominate all Chinese congresses at all levels. They make up about 65 

percent of township congresses and about more than 70 percent of 

congresses above this level. So as a matter of organizational discipline, as a matter of Party discipline, the Communist Party 

should be able to impose its will on all Congresses. 

A second consequence of Communist Party monopoly has to do 

with interest representation. Without competitive interest aggregation along Party lines, or any other observable lines, Party has no 

meaning as an organizing category for voters. Voters cannot sort 

out their representatives and assign, through votes in a popular 

election, credit or blame for governance outcomes. Put another way, 

the Communist Party monopoly strips representatives of labels 

that reflect policy orientations, and this places a truly impossible 

information burden on voters. 

Let me turn now to what has changed. In the interest of time 

I am going to focus on the most fundamental set of rules, and that 

is congressional electoral reform, particularly this direct popular 

election of congresses at the township and county level. 

In 1979, the first local Congress elections of the post-Mao era introduced three new electoral rules: elections must be contested; voting must be by secret ballot; and groups of ordinary voters may 

nominate candidates. Now, these rules were a radical departure 

from Maoist-era practices. They remain the basic organizing prinVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
8 

ciples of congress elections today. These and other electoral rules 

created new opportunities for ordinary Chinese and new challenges 

for the authorities. 

For example, voter nomination. Voter nomination of candidates 

mobilizes ordinary Chinese to bring them into the electoral process 

at the very beginning, only to disappoint them even before election 

day, so any group of 10 voters may nominate a candidate. This is 

a really low threshold of support. 

One result is a large number of voter-nominated candidates, 

tens, sometimes hundreds of candidates for two or three congress 

seats. Winners in congress elections must win a majority, not a 

plurality, of votes. So to produce a decisive election the rules set 

a ceiling of no more than twice the number of candidates on the 

ballot as congress seats. This means that, by default, the process 

of winnowing out many tens of candidates, called fermentation— 

rough translation from the Chinese—to choose a few candidates for 

the ballot has to eliminate a large number of voter nominees. 

Most nominees are passive. They don’t take the initiative to seek 

congressional office. There are a small proportion of voter nominees 

who are independent candidates who orchestrate their nomination 

by voters and actively seek office to promote individual or collective 

goals. 

The law permits independent candidates, but there are plenty of 

ways for election committees to harass them. This harassment is 

routine. In addition, the election committees manage this pivotal 

process of winnowing out, and that is much criticized as a ‘‘black 

box.’’ Election committees are also instructed to induce candidates—to induce congresses that satisfy certain electoral 

quotas—20 percent women, for example. 

So to reduce that electoral uncertainty which is created by real 

contestation and secret ballots, this winnowing out process takes 

these quotas into consideration. Overall, we find that candidates 

who are nominated by the Party and who are nominated by Partycontrolled organizations do better than voter nominees in the 

winnowing out process, and they also do better in the elections 

themselves. This creates a credibility problem. In the words of two 

preeminent Chinese congress scholars, ‘‘This situation disappoints 

voters, especially voters who nominate candidates, and leads to 

suspicion about the fairness of the elections.’’ 

From initial nomination of candidates to election day is a mere 

15 days. Electoral campaigns are prohibited by law. With little 

time, without campaigns, without competitive Party labels, a high 

proportion of Chinese vote blindly. 

In the late 1990s, some localities allowed election committees to 

arrange face-to-face meetings between the candidates and voters 

and they also organized de facto primary elections instead of the 

winnowing out process. The system did not implode with this modest local tinkering. Indeed, the political center responded. In 2004, 

the electoral law was revised to include these features. 

Let me conclude. So I commented earlier that if representative 

democracy is working, most ordinary Chinese do not yet see it that 

way. What has and has not changed in the rules that govern congresses and congress elections goes some way toward explaining 

9 

this. Representative democracy in mainland China is not authoritarian, cheap talk. 

At this point in time, however, it remains essentially a game of 

congress insiders. For them, what is most salient about elections is 

a new electoral uncertainty; with secret ballots and electoral contestation, they can lose. As winners, then, they have electoral legitimacy; representatives in popularly elected congresses think and 

act responsively as agents of their constituents. By contrast, ordinary Chinese pay attention to local congresses once every five years 

when they are immobilized to vote in elections that are not yet 

well-structured to generate their interest. 

Thank you. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you, Ms. Manion. 

Dr. Liu, please. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Manion appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF LIU YAWEI, DIRECTOR, CHINA PROGRAM, THE 

CARTER CENTER 

Mr. LIU. I want to thank the CECC for inviting me to speak. The 

last time I spoke here was seven years ago on a subject I feel passionate about. I have a written statement which is outside, so I’m 

not going to read my statement. Reading it would be like Hu Jintao 

reading his political report to the National Party’s Congress. 

So what I’ll do is tell you stories. I want to use the sound and 

fury of China’s elections to enliven the discussion here, and then 

I will draw tentative conclusions from these stories. Toward the 

end, I will say something about where to go and what to see in 

terms of electoral democracy in China, and I will offer some suggestions for policymakers in the United States on what to do. 

Stories now. In 2006—this is a personal story—I was in the office 

of the Ministry of Civil Affairs [MCA]. I was talking to an official. 

We work with them to observe village elections. Then he received 

a phone call from the county Party secretary of Qingxian. This is 

a county in Hebei Province. The Party secretary was literally crying like a baby into the phone of the MCA official. 

I asked why was he crying? He said he was crying because he 

introduced what we call the Qingxian model, an effort to resolve 

the tension between popularly elected village committee chairs and 

the Party branch secretaries. So he came up with an idea. He said, 

the Party branch at the village level should be in charge of big 

things, village committees should be in charge of small things. 

So the organization apparatus people asked him, what do you 

mean by ‘‘the Party branches are in charge of big things? ’’ He said, 

‘‘big things’’ means recruitment of Party members, ideological 

purity of the Party members, and small things means budgeting, 

decisionmaking, all the other things. So the organization apparatus 

officials immediately realized this is not the way to go, they want 

to toss him. That’s why he cried. 

The second story. The first story happened in 2006, the second 

story in 2007. This was April 20. There was an election in the village in Liaoning Province in the northeastern part of China. There 

was a total of 560 voters. The winner won the election by 307 

votes. Later on, he found out the township government would not 

certify the election. After some investigation, he found out one vilVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
10 

lager reported that he engaged in vote buying. The villager said he 

received one pineapple and two bottles of liquor from him. 

So he started the process of trying to clear his name, trying to 

get the township government to confirm his election. Six months 

passed, nothing happened, and he was so outraged that he went to 

the other villager’s home who reported vote buying and killed all 

five members of the family, including the daughter of the person 

who just was about to graduate from a good university in China. 

When he was interviewed by the reporters, he said this is not 

personal, this is political. He said he was trying to use the legal 

process to get the situation corrected. Nobody responded to him. 

When the reporters went to the village and talked to the other villagers, everyone was sympathetic with the murderer, not with the 

one who reported it, because apparently the township government 

didn’t like him and therefore they didn’t want to confirm him. The 

township government never looked into the charges against him. 

The third story took place on November 4, 2008, election day 

here in the United States. On that day, in the Great Hall of the 

People, the Minister of Civil Affairs held a meeting to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the formal promulgation of the organic 

law of the villager committees—the law that mandated direct village elections. According to the minister, one of the accomplishments of villager self-government is that the law was going to be 

amended very soon. It was finally put on the legislative agenda of 

the National People’s Congress. So toward the end of the year or 

early next year, this law was going to be amended. Now, the law 

was first passed on a provisional basis in 1986. Twelve years later, 

in 1998, the law finally became a real law in China. It’s going to 

take another 12 to 13 years for the National People’s Congress to 

amend the law. 

The fourth story took place in December 2008, in my home province, Shaanxi. There was an election to be taking place the next 

day. There were two candidates. One candidate circulated a flyer 

saying, if elected, in the next three years he would guarantee that 

each villager’s income would increase by 20,000. The other candidate was an entrepreneur. 

On the election eve, when all dogs were barking in the village, 

everyone received a flyer from the entrepreneur candidate indicating that if he was elected he was going to give 20,000 Chinese 

dollars—which is equivalent of 3,300 U.S. dollars—to every eligible 

voter in the village the next day. He won the election by 30 votes. 

On the following day, as promised, he put the money into the bank 

accounts of all 700 voters. We’re talking about 2 million U.S. dollars. 

So there’s a huge debate on whether this is vote buying. The 

money was distributed after the election was over. He didn’t care 

whether he was voted by this voter or not, everyone was going to 

get 20,000 RMB. 

The fifth story took place March 30 of this year. The murder 

story I mentioned earlier appeared in a news magazine run by the 

New China News Agency. Dr. Li Cheng talked about how liberal 

the Chinese media has become. So there was this very negative 

publicity on village elections. The next day, the Ministry of Civil 

Affairs worked with New China News Agency to file a wire story, 

11 

which I quoted in my written statement. This is a three-scholar 

dialogue on how good village elections are. 

My sixth and final story is about a blog written by a professor 

from Renmin University—also known as People’s University—one 

of the best universities in China. In the blog, which was viewed by 

hundreds of thousands of Chinese net surfers, he basically said 

democratic elections in developing countries never work. They 

never deliver stability and prosperity. He had a long list of violence 

taking place in different countries in the world in the wake of national elections. He also talked about how violent Chinese village 

elections have become. He said democratic elections will only lead 

to murder, hatred, and resentment. He used Pakistan, Iraq, Haiti, 

and other countries as an example to declare that ‘‘we need to stop 

this great leap forward of elections in China.’’ 

These are my stories so you can get the feel, the sound, and the 

fury. 

Now, what conclusions can we draw from these stories? First, the 

Party apparatus organization, the [zuzhibu] apparatus is very resistant to the idea of allowing villagers to govern themselves. It 

seems to be an alien concept to them to let people govern themselves. I wrote in my written statement that these officials have to 

learn and to adapt. This is going to be a long process. 

Second, the township government does have huge control of 

every election. By law, they’re not allowed to intervene, but if they 

don’t offer support, if they don’t deal with complaints, that is going 

to have huge ramifications for the villagers themselves. 

Third, there is what I call the power elite, made up of officials 

and scholars who basically use these isolated cases of violence, vote 

buying, and electoral fraud to say that democratic elections Western-style will never work in China. We need to stop that. 

Fourth, the absence of a good law is hampering democratic elections and the villagers’ self-governance at the grassroots level. Look 

at how long it took to amend the law. The organic law of villager 

committees does need articles and clauses to define what is vote 

buying and to clearly identify, if you violate the law, what kind of 

punishment is going to be assessed. Otherwise, this will always be 

what many Chinese legal scholars call a soft law. It’s not going to 

work. 

Fifth, the Ministry of Civil Affairs—this is where many scholars 

say the true reform-oriented officials are—tries very hard to deepen 

the reform, but on the other side they have to deal with public relations. The story I tell you is that the media reporting of village 

elections have tended to be very negative in recent years, unlike in 

1997 and 1998 when the law was finally amended, everyone was 

talking about village elections being a silent revolution that’s going 

to change China in a very fundamental way. 

Finally, village elections are no longer a top priority of the government, particularly at the time of the economic downturn. Policies were made not to improve the quality of the elections but to 

see how to deliver public goods efficiently and effectively. They are 

about making services available to the urban and rural—particularly the rural—dwellers. They have to make people feel happy, 

because if the pursuit of happiness is getting taken care of, the legitimacy of the Party will remain intact. These are the tentative 

12 

conclusions we can draw about the current status of village elections in China. 

Now, where to go from here? Melanie already mentioned, I think 

we’re going to see, if there’s going to be real, truthful, meaningful 

electoral democracy in China, we’ll have to look at People’s Congress deputies’ elections at the township and county levels. Melanie 

already talked about how important the people’s deputies can be so 

I won’t elaborate on that. 

What I will do is give a sense of scale. In terms of counties, 

where voters directly elect the county people’s congress deputies 

there are 2,860. That’s how many counties there are in China. In 

terms of townships, the number is 41,000. How many deputies are 

elected? About 3 to 4 million. Now, if these elections are real, if the 

elected deputies at this level can elect government leaders, then 

things will change in a very fundamental way. So if we’re waiting 

for—the never-coming, long overdue electoral democracy, this is 

going to be it. 

To see if there is real will and an action plan, the year we are 

going to watch is 2011–2012, because every five years is a new 

election cycle. So that’s what we’re going to see. 

In terms of what can we do? Not much. Really, there’s not much 

we can do. The U.S. Government should not tell the Chinese how 

to run elections, but there are things we can do. We acknowledge 

that China does have elections and we want to observe these elections. American leaders can give speeches. Before President Bush 

went to China in 2005, he delivered a Kyoto speech on November 

18. He said the essence of democracy is universal. The paths, the 

roads to democracy are different, procedures of democracy are different. President Bush made that very clear. The Japanese, British, American, French all have different democracies. We should 

acknowledge that China is going to have a democracy maybe without a multi-party system, maybe without a lot of things that we are 

familiar with. So we need to ask about, we need to encourage, we 

need to acknowledge that there are elections. 

As I mentioned earlier, the government should not tell the Chinese how to run elections, but the government should insist that 

NGOs—although this is also a sensitive issue—be given access in 

China. We’ve been working in China—together with the International Republican Institute—working in China on grassroots 

election—but we should tell them that these NGOs have been 

working in other developing countries, they do have technical expertise. They are not intervening; they are simply providing technical assistance. 

We also need to try to tell the Chinese that the same kind of 

expertise can be offered in other areas other than elections. Rather 

than to simply say we want to offer support in the election area, 

we can offer support on e-government, we can offer support on access to information, we can offer support on building a vibrant civil 

society. I think that might be a better, and more productive approach. Thanks. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Liu. 

Dr. Bruce Dickson. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Liu appears in the appendix.] 

13 

STATEMENT OF BRUCE DICKSON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL 

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, THE GEORGE 

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 

Mr. DICKSON. I would like to begin by thanking the Commission 

for inviting me here, and thank all of you for showing up on the 

beginning of a holiday weekend to hear our comments. 

From the start of the reform era in China over 30 years ago, it 

has generally been an assumption, mostly by foreign observers of 

China, that eventually political reform will have to be in parallel 

with economic development in China. This is sometimes based on 

the notions of modernization theory, that economic development 

leads to democracy. 

In some cases, it is based on what has become known as the 

Washington consensus, that for economic development to be sustained and for a true capitalist economy to emerge it has to be combined with a minimal state and a democratic political system. But 

the Chinese example after these 30 years points to some of the 

flaws in these assumptions. What has become known as the Beijing 

consensus indicates that not only is authoritarian governance compatible with economic growth, in some cases it may be preferable. 

I am not proposing the truth of this statement myself, but it is a 

notion that can be heard coming from China now, and some foreign 

observers use China as an example of the benefits of authoritarian 

rule for rapid growth. 

From the Chinese perspective, the Chinese Communist Party 

leaders are hoping that economic development in the country will 

not weaken its rule, just the opposite: they hope that rising living 

standards and ongoing economic modernization will create popular 

support in the country that will prolong its rule indefinitely. 

One of the most consistent findings in research on contemporary 

China is that, much to our surprise when we look at China and see 

it riven with corruption, inequality, other types of governance failures, nevertheless there is a remarkably high level of support for 

the government in ways that are not often appreciated. The Communist Party has proven to be far more adaptable, far more durable 

and even more popular than the conventional wisdom would expect. 

The notion that privatization will eventually lead to democratization of the country often assumes that the Communist Party is a 

passive actor in this process, but in fact it has been the main instigator of privatization which has led to the rapid development in 

the country. Its close embrace of the private sector has encouraged 

its development, and in many ways its success, over the years and 

decades of reform. 

The rhetorical commitment to the private sector has increased in 

both the Party and the state constitutions in the country. The CCP 

has offered an elaborate ideological justification for promoting private entrepreneurship, and even integrating capitalists into the political system. Jiang Zemin’s notion of the ‘‘Three Represents’’ was 

largely designed to legitimize this practice of incorporating capitalists into what remains of the Communist system in the country. 

The Communist Party has encouraged its own members to go 

into business, not just former Party and government officials but 

also rank-and-file members, to ‘‘take the lead in getting rich’’—a 

prominent slogan in the 1980s—and to actively be a part of the priVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
14 

vate sector. It has also co-opted successful entrepreneurs into the 

Party. Those who are both Communist Party members and private 

entrepreneurs are often referred to as ‘‘red capitalists’’ to indicate 

this connection with the Party. 

Whereas only about 6 percent of the population of the country 

belong to the Party, almost 40 percent of private entrepreneurs are 

also Party members. Most of them were in the Party before going 

into business, but about a third or so of them were co-opted afterward. This shows the growing integration at the individual level of 

entrepreneurs into the Party and Party members into the private 

sector. 

There is also a growing number of institutional links between the 

Party and the private sector. Many of the business associations in 

the country are officially sanctioned, or at least closely supervised 

by, the Party. There is also an attempt to build Party organizations 

within private firms and this process has picked up since the time 

the ‘‘Three Represents’’ slogan was adopted into the Constitution. 

Building Party cells in private firms is not just a way of putting 

eyes and ears of the Party into the private sector. In many ways, 

these Party cells operate more as logistical support for the firms 

themselves. They support the business aspects of the enterprise 

more than the ideological training that usually you would expect 

Party cells to do. 

The assumption that privatization will lead to democratization of 

the country also assumes that capitalists are inherently pro-democratic. This is largely based upon the European experience. Barrington Moore’s phrase ‘‘no bourgeois, no democracy’’ still seems to 

be influential in lots of people’s thinking, but the experience of latedeveloping countries in Asia and elsewhere indicates that capitalists 

are rarely at the front edge of political change, and democracy in 

particular. There is often much more cooperation between the state 

and business in developing countries than had been the case for 

the western European countries. 

In China’s case in particular, many of the private entrepreneurs 

in the country have very close, shared ties with Party and government leaders. In some cases, this involves family ties: many sons 

and daughters of high-level officials have gone into business in the 

country, and often very successfully so. Other entrepreneurs have 

shared social and school ties or professional links with officials that 

create a common link with the state, and they share an interest in 

promoting rapid growth. The Communist Party has pursued rapid 

growth as one of its claims to legitimacy, and obviously the private 

sector supports that initiative. 

So in China, as in other developing countries, the state and business are very closely intertwined. The shared identities and common interests create support for the status quo. Entrepreneurs in 

China have been the main beneficiaries of the Party’s economic reform policies and have little incentive to prefer democracy as an alternative regime in the country. 

Whether in terms of their willingness to be integrated into the 

existing political system institutions—the local people’s congresses 

that Melanie Manion has talked about—or even village elections— 

as Liu Yawei has talked about—many entrepreneurs are actively 

involved in the political institutions that exist and have not tried 

15 

to form alternative parties or alternative organizations to try and 

challenge the status quo in the country. 

What could cause that to change? So far, China’s capitalists have 

not shown much indication at all of promoting for political change. 

But several factors might point them in a different direction. One 

would be a decline in the pro-business policies that the Communist 

Party is currently pursuing. With the economic downturn there’s 

been a concern about what types of policies will be promoted. As 

Cheng Li mentioned earlier, there has been a populist strand of 

thinking among the very top leadership. Policies that are designed 

to redistribute wealth, to increase equality in the country, as opposed to pursuing rapid growth, may also cause capitalists to rethink their commitment to the status quo. 

Oddly enough, the emergence of a true market economy would 

also loosen this link between entrepreneurs and the state. If they 

were less dependent on the state for access to capital, to bank 

loans, to exports, and so on, they would have less need to support 

the system as it is. 

If there was a dramatic increase in corruption, that would also 

lead them to re-think their support for the regime. The concern for 

corruption is one of the factors that lead people to have less support for the status quo than would otherwise be the case. 

Just let me end with two policy implications from this, neither 

of which are particularly novel, but I think still important. First of 

all, economic growth alone does not produce democracy, and therefore promoting prosperity in China will not guarantee political 

change there. 

Second of all, capitalists in China and elsewhere are not necessarily democrats. Promoting privatization, therefore, will not 

guarantee democratization of the country. The same people who 

benefit from privatization seem to have no particular interest in 

and do not see any real benefit of a democratic alternative. 

Last, even though my comments did not directly touch on this, 

a final implication for looking at China’s future, in light of the experience of Russia and other post-Communist countries, is that the 

alternative to Communist rule in China is not necessarily a democratic regime. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dickson appears in the appendix.] 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you, Dr. Dickson. 

Now we’re turning to the Q&A portion of this proceeding. 

First, we’re going to turn to Anna Brettell, who’s our senior researcher, and was instrumental in putting this panel together, to 

ask the first question. Please, Anna. 

Ms. BRETTELL. My question relates to transparency during innerparty, village, and people’s congress elections. It is my understanding that there are few, if any, domestic or international 

groups that go out and conduct election monitoring, that might 

help to highlight and resolve some of the problems that we see in 

those elections. 

Transparency is especially important in the inner-party elections, 

because there is still one-party rule in China and the Party organizations still reach down into society at all levels, so it’s really in 

the interest of all Chinese citizens to know what’s happening with 

16 

elections. I am wondering, how transparent are inner-party elections, and why isn’t there more monitoring—election monitoring by 

individuals and groups that go out to the villages, townships, and 

counties around the country to help monitor elections? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Anna, do you want this directed at one person right now? 

Ms. BRETTELL. No. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. Great. Just brief responses, if you 

will, so we can go right back to the audience. Thank you. 

Mr. LI. Shall I? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Yes, please. 

Mr. LI. Well, first of all, as I said in my formal statement, there’s 

a lack of transparency. But there are several things that I should 

also clarify. Procedures are actually already there in inner-party 

democracy. Several things: One is term limits. No leader should 

stay in power for more than two terms. Each term is five years. 

Second, the age requirement for retirement. In a way, it is really 

biased against the elder leaders, but at least it creates a kind of 

sense of fairness. For example, in the Central Committee, with a 

total of 371 people, no one was born before 1940. Everyone who 

was born in 1939 or earlier retired. There’s no exception. 

There is also fairness in terms of regional representation—each 

province has two full-member seats. The exceptions are Xinjiang or 

Tibet, they can have three seats. It is the Chinese-style affirmative 

action. 

Also, there are regular elections in which there are more candidates than seats [cha’e xuanju] and about 7.5 percent or 12 percent on the ballot will be eliminated. Also, you do see the list of 

the alternates of the Central Committee, and their names are 

ranked according to how many votes they receive. Those in the bottom receiving the lowest number of votes are usually princelings, 

children of high-ranking officials or top leaders’ bodyguards. Jiang 

Zemin’s bodyguard, for example, got the lowest vote in a recent 

election. 

This is actually quite transparent. If you look at the Chinese 

Xinhua news Web site, you can find these rankings of alternates 

by votes in the past two decades. But of course, we still don’t know 

how the deal was cut. Largely it’s the previous standing committee 

or Politburo that decided the next one. 

But the interesting thing is, for the Party congress in 2007, and 

also the state council election in the National People’s Congress 

last year, both top leadership lists were actually leaked out three 

or four weeks before they were announced. It turned out that these 

lists were completely correct. It’s not because some in the media 

were really brilliant in predicting the appointments of these new 

leaders, or some scholars predicted the election of these leaders. It’s 

just because the real lists were leaked out. 

In that regard, it’s still largely a political manipulation and lack 

of transparency. But at the same time, the procedures and rules 

were clear and deals were constantly cut, as a result of increasing 

transparency in a relative sense. Of course, if it really becomes 

transparent, China will become a democracy. It, of course, has not 

reached this stage yet, but you do see some sorts of important inVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
17 

formation available, some are not. That’s the dynamic we’re into 

right now. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Dr. Manion? 

Ms. MANION. Yes. So you’ve touched mainly on the elections 

within the congress, sort of, I guess, the congress insider elections. 

Let me focus on the elections which involve the ordinary Chinese 

people. I want to say three things. One, is the elections themselves, 

the problems of transparency in the congress elections, mainly 

proxy voting and roving ballot boxes. These are especially common 

in the rural areas. There are rural areas where that is the most 

common mode of voting and that really opens the possibility for 

abuses. The Chinese know this. Roving ballot boxes—it’s very difficult to get rid of these just to enable people to vote. Proxy voting. 

They’re starting to try to have more regulation of this. 

The second issue is not in the elections themselves, but it’s in 

that winnowing out process, which is absolutely pivotal because 

this is where we’re talking about who’s on the ballot. That is a 

most untransparent process and that has been hugely criticized by 

Chinese scholars who tend to favor primary elections. 

As I’ve said, primary elections is something that some localities 

have experimented with because they are much more transparent, 

it’s choosing who’s going to be on the ballot through a primary election, and that is something that’s permitted in the most recent 

version of the electoral law. It’s not yet widely practiced, however. 

Let me say one final thing about this winnowing out process. In 

fact, it is not transparent. I mentioned the electoral quotas, and I 

used the example of women. We’re talking about congresses as a 

movement from sort of this mirror of society to substantive representation. At the same time, the Chinese still have not abandoned a notion that congresses should still mirror society, that 

different groups in society should be reflected in the congresses. 

So that very untransparent process is also used by election committees to try to stack the decks in favor of particular social groups 

on the ballot because they can’t control who wins anymore, but 

they do have control over the ballot. So one of the interesting 

things is, it doesn’t always mean government officials are on the 

ballot. 

It can mean trying to find more women on the ballot. People in 

democratic parties are trying to find the ideal candidate, an intellectual woman, a well-educated woman who’s in one of the eight 

satellite parties, you know, the democratic parties. Well, you’re 

going to get on the ballot. So this is a very untransparent process, 

sometimes, to achieve these aims of having congresses that mirror 

society, whether or not they represent society’s interests. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Would you like to—— 

Mr. LIU. Yes. I just want to make it very quick. Village elections 

are a lot more transparent than any other elections. The intraparty elections are the least transparent. Furthermore, Chinese are 

not terribly concerned about secrecy of the ballot. They are very 

transparent about—for example, we want 15 percent of women to 

serve at the county level of the people’s congress, but how you get 

there is not transparent. So where we want them to be secret, 

18 

they’re not secret. Where you want them to be transparent, they’re 

not. The more competitive the elections, the more transparent it is. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Dr. Dickson? No? Okay. 

So we’re going to turn to the audience now. 

This gentleman here. 

Mr. MARTIN. I’m Michael Martin from the Congressional Research Service. In a couple of presentations you referred to a notion 

of Chinese-style democracy. If I may, in many ways, all of you who 

went on to then make presentations assumed that Western-style 

democracy is—— 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Excuse me. Can the folks in the back hear 

this? 

VOICES. No. 

Mr. MARTIN. Okay. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thanks. 

Mr. MARTIN. All right. Well, but then in many ways your presentations went on to assume a Western-style democracy, that is to 

say, that you had to have secret ballots and election process, and 

that democracy comes from a process of elections. However, you 

just talked about a different version, which is a democratic system, 

is one where everybody is represented in whatever official body, 

different segments of society are represented in an official body, 

that then makes power—makes decisions. 

One could also argue that in Chinese tradition there’s a notion 

of democracy or governance that comes from having representatives 

who are good governors, who effectively do what the people want 

no matter how they’re selected. Then in addition, one other example of sort of a Chinese-style element of democracy was in the late 

1970s and early 1980s. They experimented with the election of factory managers. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. I know there’s a question in here. 

Mr. MARTIN. Okay. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Mr. MARTIN. I’m getting to it. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. No worries. 

Mr. MARTIN. Anyway, I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit 

about what you would see Chinese-style democracy or the Chinese 

leadership are seeing as Chinese-style democracy rather than comparing China to the degree to which they reflect our style of democracy. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. 

Mr. MARTIN. Do you see that they continue to see the legitimacy 

of their government based on good governance or on the process by 

which they’re being selected? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. Just one person for this question. Dr. 

Dickson, do you want to take it? Okay, Dr. Li. Yes, please. 

Mr. LI. Well, again, I think that democracy, I believe, reflects a 

universal value. Of course, there are different variations among democracies. But the question for China at the moment is how to 

make the transition. What is the road map for China’s democratic 

transformation? Again, very few Chinese will argue that China 

should have shock therapy and immediately adopt a multi-party 

system. 

19 

Second, from the Chinese leadership perspective, democratic reforms should have some procedures and priorities. They want to 

start with inner-party democracy first, and then general democracy, start with the rule of law first and then elections, start with 

low-level elections and gradually move up from village, to town, to 

county, to province, et cetera. This is their plan; whether it can 

work or not, we don’t know. But that is what they emphasize as 

the Chinese style of democracy. 

Again, ultimately, it’s a universal value. Wen Jiabao used this 

definition of democracy, and it’s a definition we also use: election, 

independence of the judiciary, and supervision with checks and balances, including media freedom. But again, it’s the process. It’s the 

transition period that is the most difficult part. 

Twenty years ago we talked about Chinese-style market reform 

or socialism with Chinese characteristics. It’s a name to refer to 

privatization. But now we found the Chinese economy quite similar 

to a market economy, but it also still maintains some kind of Chinese-ness. I do believe that China is already largely a market economy. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Yes, sir. please. Just stand and state your name, and project so 

the folks in the back can hear you. 

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT. Professor Dickson [off microphone] not 

necessarily lead to democracy, and this symbiotic relationship between the Chinese Party state and entrepreneurs is a very good 

example. I wonder when and whether the Party will—a less probusiness policy—possibility in this—see that this relationship becomes more entrenched—for instance, is it not at all possible to see 

entrepreneurs beginning to be admitted into the Central Committee, or even the Politburo? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Professor Dickson? 

Mr. DICKSON. Because of what Cheng Li has referred to before 

as the bipartisanship within the Party, by the combination of both 

the elitist and populist factions, it would be very difficult for the 

Party to abandon its pro-growth policies, pro-market policies because you’ve got a very strongly entrenched group that’s in favor 

of it. In fact, even with the populists in charge during this current 

generation of leadership, growth has gotten faster than it was 

when the elitists were in charge. So, both groups are committed to 

rapid growth, but the question is, how do you deal with some of 

the negative consequences that come from it? 

Although private entrepreneurs are not represented in the Central Committee, much less the Politburo, there are some capitalists 

who are already in the Central Committee but they’re largely 

heads of state-owned enterprises or what used to be state-owned 

enterprises but now have been reformed in different ways, but not 

by any definition private. So far, no private entrepreneur has made 

it even into the alternate list of the Central Committee, which indicates some resistance to having private entrepreneurs be represented at the very top of the political system. As long as you 

don’t find people even on the alternate list, you’ll never see them 

on the Politburo. I think when you see a truly private entrepreneur 

in the Politburo or appointed to a ministerial level position in the 

20 

government, that would be an indication that this system has fundamentally changed. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Dr. Li wants to add a quick point. 

Mr. LI. Well, first, I disagree with your assumption about when 

China will adopt a less market-oriented stance—but in my view it’s 

already happened during the past five or six years since Hu Jintao 

and Wen Jiabao came into power. They have adjusted Jiang 

Zemin’s more market-friendly policy, so that now policy should restrain the market. There’s less bank lending and land leasing. 

You can see that the stock market buyers in Shanghai are not 

very happy with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao’s policies. Particularly 

in the coastal private sector there was a concern about their macroeconomic control policy. In my view, actually, in the next few years 

you will see another shift back, particularly if Xi Jinping comes to 

power and especially after he consolidates his power. Now they 

want to accelerate Shanghai’s growth. The first quarter of this 

year, in terms of the GDP growth, Shanghai was the very bottom, 

so the private sector there is already hurt, particularly with the 

macroeconomic control policy that started in 2004. It really hurt 

the private sector to a great extent. 

Now, the second part of your question: when entrepreneurs will 

join the Politburo. I think I will rephrase that in a slightly different way. I think certainly the fifth generation will succeed Hu 

Jintao and Wen Jiabao in a few years. There’s no major entrepreneurs in the fifth generation that will enter the Politburo. But 

elite politics in the following generation, if we may call, the sixth 

generation, will be a different game. Whether at that time the Chinese Communists will still be with us, I don’t know. 

But one thing is already clear. Look at the children of these 

fourth and fifth generations of leaders, none of them serves in the 

CCP political system. They are all in business, whether private sector, joint ventures, or state-owned enterprises. These are real entrepreneurs. Of course, they had political interests as well, when 

they become interested in political power, it will be a different 

game. So I think the answer to your question is, it will take about 

one and a half generations. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Mr. VEGAS. Well, thank you very much. Actually, I have a lot of 

questions. 

My name is Joe Vegas and I’m from the American Federation of 

Teachers. I’m very interested in education, teachers, local elections, 

corruption at the local level, the results of the—low salaries of 

rural teachers in particular—and often they’re not—I’m also interested in the education process and what impact that might have 

on democratization. 

I think that Dr. Manion, you had mentioned that—I’m curious— 

differences between urban areas and rural areas—and differences 

on various levels of education. What I’m getting at is, will the improvement in the education system and increase in information and 

knowledge possibly create pressure on younger people for participation, rights, et cetera? 

And second, Dr. Dickson, are there any forces of resistance that 

are beginning to emerge? I’m thinking about workers, for example, 

who are unemployed, farmers who lose their land and protest 

21 

movements that are challenging authoritarian rule, partly as a result of economics—massive transfer of—so sort of a—particularly 

since we’re on the eve of Tiananmen, all of your presentations seem 

to lead one to believe that not much changed. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. 

Mr. VEGAS. —challenge at that time. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Great questions. 

Dr. Manion? Then we’ll go to Dr. Bruce Dickson. 

Ms. MANION. First, let me start at the beginning—start at the 

end, rather, with ‘‘not much change is possible.’’ Listen carefully: 

I think we’re all saying there’s been a lot of change. If, by change, 

you mean grass roots, popular, rowdy—what the authorities would 

call rowdy disruptions, no. I mean, who knows? I was in Beijing on 

June 4, and believe me, at that time I though the university students were the most boring, materialistic people. I was shocked 

when they engaged in the sorts of things on the street. So, we’re 

very bad at predicting those sorts of things, right? But I think 

we’re all talking about major change, major political change, which 

has been top down. Okay. 

Now, let me get to your other questions: urban-rural differences. 

Very briefly, the particular survey—the best survey that I know of 

is political participation in Beijing and it’s that one where I talked 

about, over time, can you remember anything your congress representative has done in the past five years. 

This is a survey that is a wonderful, reliable, stratified probability sample, Beijing, the most politically active population in 

China: over time, a decrease in political interest. So that’s an 

urban population in a highly—a highly politicized urban population 

in China, and over time interest in congresses has decreased. 

Education. Generally we do see the same effects of education on 

political interest in China as we do elsewhere, which is the more 

highly educated, the more interested. Then the other thing in 

terms of urban-rural differences, one of the things that you are 

starting to see, I mentioned independent candidates. One of the 

things that you’re starting to see in the urban areas are home owners committees, so the private home owners committees becoming 

more politically active. Indeed, some members of home owners committees have run for congresses and won. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Dr. Dickson, please? 

Mr. DICKSON. Most of the research on popular protests in the 

country has shown that protesters are very careful to not question 

the policies themselves, but focus more on how they’re implemented. So you don’t question whether or not China should be pursuing a market economy, you instead focus on how local officials 

are engaging in corrupt practices to take advantage of that transition, through land grabs where farmers have their lands taken 

away and have been given just a pittance in compensation, and 

that land is then redeveloped as an industrial park or a commercial 

park of some kind. That is a very common cause of protest in the 

country. 

Usually what people are demanding is not a roll-back of the policy, but just that they want fair compensation for their land, which 

is a very different type of demand from a call for national elections 

to overthrow the Party, that kind of thing. Protesters are very careVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
22 

ful not to engage in truly political or politicized issues, but focus 

more on bread-and-butter kinds of issues. 

In a larger sense, there seems to be a notion that it’s correct to 

move toward a market economy and move away from the central 

planning system, even with its variety of social and welfare benefits that went with it, so when people lose their jobs they often do 

not blame the policy, they blame the fact that their manager was 

corrupt, that they had bad luck to be working for this firm that 

went bankrupt, that they are working for a sleazy foreign capitalist 

who closed shop and left without paying them back wages, but they 

don’t actually blame the policies themselves. So in that sense there 

isn’t a rising amount of ferment in the country. Popular resentment 

is largely directed at local officials and local corruption and not at 

the policies themselves. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. Dr. Li, very briefly. 

Mr. LI. Just 20 seconds. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Yes. 

Mr. LI. Well, if you think of democracy as an event, it certainly 

is not happening in China. China did not make a fundamental 

breakthrough for democracy. But if you think democracy is a process, I think it’s happening. What I said earlier is really about political changes, not about continuity. 

You talked about education. That’s a very good question about 

the younger generations, the future generations. There’s a documentary film called ‘‘Please Vote For Me.’’ You can watch it on 

YouTube in half an hour, it was directed by a Chinese director. It’s 

a story about nine-year-old kids in elementary school in Wuhan 

and their dirty tricks, political lobby, personality assassination, 

money bribery, and all kinds of practice for election that seem to 

be happening even in China’s elementary schools. I think probably 

they will be really very much like us in the West in the future. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you. 

Toy Reid, you have the last question. Please begin. 

Mr. REID. Thank you. Thank you to all the panelists for very insightful comments. 

Since I have the last question, I guess I’ll take the liberty to be 

a little provocative for the sake of discussion. I’m sitting here 

thinking that it’s been 21 years, if my math is correct, since village 

elections were first introduced in China. Movement upward has 

largely stalled. In 2001, the CCP Central Committee said that direct elections at the township level were unconstitutional after 

some had tried to experiment. 

Direct elections obviously haven’t moved to municipal, provincial, 

or national levels. Since then, last year, some folks in Shenzhen, 

both in and out of the government, made some pretty bold proposals about trying to institute a special political zone where they 

could carry out democratic reforms, but the Guangdong Party secretary squelched that idea. 

So my question is with the pace of political reform. I think we 

all agree that the transition should be gradual, just given the nature of China and its sheer size and complexity. But, is it right to 

accept that political reform can only come at such an extremely 

slow pace? To borrow terminology from the previous administration, could we be guilty of what was called the ‘‘soft bigotry of low 

23 

expectations,’’ when we implicitly suggest that the Chinese can’t do 

any better than this, so we should all just accept the need to be 

very patient? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. Thank you. Anybody want to take 

that, ‘‘soft bigotry of low expectations? ’’ Come on, I know we have 

several people who really want to talk on this point. Thank you. 

Ms. MANION. I’m going to be thinking about soft bigotry of low 

expectations as I’m talking, so I’ll get to that last. But one thing 

I do want to say, and this is a particularly important comparison 

between village and congress elections and village councils and congresses. 

While at the time or shortly after the village rule grassroots democratization, there were some pronouncements by Chinese leaders, 

and certainly much hope by foreign scholars, that this would trickle 

up. In fact, it is a system that is designed to trickle up only in the 

sense that it might be an education of the Chinese people in voting 

and democratization in that sense. Institutionally, there’s no trickle 

up there. Village elections—first of all, they’re not policy relevant. 

You’re electing an executive committee. These are tiny communities. This is not representative democracy. 

So institutionally, the linkage is not there to trickle up. Village 

officials are not state officials, okay? They’re not on the payroll. 

This is actually why I started looking at the congresses, at this sort 

of middle level, because then you go look at the top level. The top 

level is very policy relevant, but there’s nothing happening, right? 

The pace is glacial up there. 

So when you look at this middle level of congresses at the township, county, municipal and province, there is an institutional 

trickle up factor in the sense that, while I sort of dismissed it, I 

said, well, it’s all a game of congress insiders above the county 

level, the lower level congresses elect the higher level congresses, 

so county elects city, city elects provincial, provincial elects national. Right within that institutional structure you have the possibility of a real trickle up change in delegate composition, and that 

can be quite meaningful. 

As it stands now, the lower level congresses are the most interesting and assertive—politically interesting. There’s a lot happening 

there because there are lower proportions of government officials, 

there are lower proportions of Communist Party members. 

Now, there is, institutionally, this possibility of trickle up just in 

that electoral process of delegate composition. 

And do I think that delegate composition affects what happens 

in these congresses? Yes. I mean, you still need institutional 

change and we still see the slow pace of institutional change. But 

that delegate composition is something that contains within it the 

seeds of trickle up. That was never there. That was never there in 

the village elections. 

Soft bigotry of low expectations. If we have expectations that are 

too high, I don’t know where that gets us. As a policy matter, do 

we push the Chinese to move farther and to move faster? I don’t 

think that sort of outside pressure has ever affected the pace of 

Chinese reform. In the end, I think what happens in China and the 

pace of what happens in China really depends on the Chinese 

themselves. So we might think about this as low expectations. I 

24 

don’t know that our expectations are going to have any effect on 

the pace of change in China. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. Anybody else? 

Mr. LI. May I? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Of course you may. 

Mr. LI. Well, I want to say, with a sense of humility, six or seven 

years ago when we talked about the Chinese economy, particularly 

at a time when China just joined the WTO, we thought the Chinese 

economy would collapse. There were some books about that, which 

certainly said that Chinese state-owned enterprises, particularly 

Chinese banks, state-owned banks, would collapse. But look at it 

this year. The world’s top 10 banks, 4 of them are Chinese banks, 

including number 1, number 2, and number 3. Our gigantic banks 

like Citigroup and Bank of America could not even make it to the 

list. 

There’s strong cynicism in the West when it comes to China’s political change. It sounds like nothing has happened. It sounds like 

the middle class or other developments such as the evolution of the 

legal system, the rise of lawyers have no impact whatsoever. It’s 

too early to say that. I agree with you that China should find its 

own pace, its own priority, own procedure. Of course, we still need 

to be critical of the Chinese leadership for the human rights problems and the lack of media freedom, but at the same time we 

should also have tremendous respect for the Chinese people and 

Chinese leaders for their own way to find the path for a better and 

more democratic political future for China. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Okay. That will be our final note. Dr. Li, 

Dr. Manion, Dr. Liu, Dr. Dickson, thank you so much for coming 

today. Also, a big thank-you to Anna Brettell of our staff who put 

this really interesting event together. Please join us June 4 in this 

room at 2:15 p.m. for a full Commission hearing on Tiananmen 

Square demonstrations 20 years later. 

Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m. the roundtable was adjourned.] 

(25) 

A P P E N D I X 

26 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHENG LI

MAY 22, 2009

FROM SELECTION TO ELECTION? 

EXPERIMENTS IN THE RECRUITMENT OF CHINESE POLITICAL ELITES

Are elections playing an important role in Chinese politics today? The simple answer is no. Is China gradually moving from selection to election in 

the recruitment of political elites? That is a more difficult question to answer. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is certainly unwilling to give up 

its monopoly on political power. Chinese leaders continue to claim, explicitly rather than implicitly, that the CCP is entitled to make all of the country’s most important personnel appointments. But since the late 1990s, especially in recent years, the Chinese authorities have experimented with 

some electoral methods in the selection and confirmation of Party and government officials at various levels of leadership. With a focus on both intraParty elections and people’s congress elections, this article offers a preliminary assessment of elections in China—their significance, limitations, and 

impact on the Chinese political process. 

It is extremely unusual in China for candidates who are vying for elected posts 

to openly engage in campaigning, lobbying, public debates, personal attacks, and 

vote buying.1 However, that is exactly what happened recently—not among political 

elites in Beijing but in a documentary film covering the election of student leaders 

at a primary school in Wuhan. In this newly released, award-winning film, Please 

Vote for Me (Qing wei wo toupiao), director Chen Weijun meticulously documented 

the entire two-week-long campaign and election process, featuring a trio of thirdgraders chosen by their teacher to run for the position of class monitor.2 The film 

revealed the motivations, behaviors, and various kinds of ‘‘dirty tactics’’ used by 

schoolkids in campaigning. The children involved, of course, were heavily influenced 

by the adults around them. 

The phenomena explored in this documentary film may or may not be indicative 

of the future trajectory of Chinese politics. It is also important to note that these 

dirty tactics do not necessarily bear any relevance to the behavioral patterns exhibited by the upcoming generation of Chinese elites. What this episode does show is 

that the idea of elections has gradually and quietly penetrated Chinese society, even 

directly affecting the lives of school children. 

During the past decade, grassroots elections, or more precisely village elections, 

have regularly taken place in China’s 680,000 villages.3 In addition, elections have 

occurred more regularly at high levels of leadership. The Chinese Communist Party 

(CCP) has adopted or consolidated some electoral methods to choose the members 

of the Central Committee and other high-ranking leaders. Under the official guidelines of the CCP Organization Department, major personnel appointments are now 

often decided by votes in various committees rather than solely by the committee’s 

Party chief.4 In the past two years, the term ‘‘decision by vote’’ (piaoju), has frequently appeared in Chinese discourse on political and administrative reforms. 

TAKING THE ELECTIONS IN CHINA SERIOUSLY

A potentially far-reaching development as regards the use of elections to select political leaders occurred recently in Shenzhen, a major city in the southern province 

of Guangdong. The city leaders announced that they would have a multi-candidate 

competition for the posts of mayor and vice mayor. In May 2008, the authorities in 

Shenzhen posted on the municipal government website a draft of the ‘‘Guidelines 

for Government Reforms in Shenzhen for the Short-Term Future.’’ 5 The guidelines 

specified that delegates of the district or municipal people’s congress in Shenzhen 

would elect heads of districts and bureaus through multi-candidate elections. As 

part of the process, all candidates would offer their statements of purpose and participate in public debates. According to these guidelines, within three years this 

same method will be applied to the election of mayor and vice mayor in Shenzhen, 

a city of 10 million people.6

The Chinese media have reported widely on the specifics of these guidelines, often 

stating that with this ‘‘political breakthrough,’’ Shenzhen will likely add to its status 

as China’s first special economic zone the designation of the country’s first special 

27 

political zone (zhengzhi tequ).7 At this point, Shenzhen has already initiated the 

process of conducting elections in accordance with the guidelines. In May 2008, the 

city elected the new Party secretary of Futian District and the head of the Shenzhen 

Municipal Office of High Technological Development, with two candidates vying for 

each post. In addition, several other heads of bureau-and district-level leadership in 

Shenzhen were elected, with two or three candidates competing for each position. 

Wang Yang, Politburo member and Party secretary of Guangdong, has been known 

for his push for political reforms and ‘‘thought emancipation’’ since he arrived in the 

province as Party chief in December 2007.8 Most recently, Wang called for more 

competition on the part of candidates and greater choices for voters in these elections in Shenzhen.9

It should be noted that the Chinese Communist Party is not interested in giving 

up its monopoly on political power to experiment with multiparty democratic competition. Chinese leaders continue to claim, explicitly rather than implicitly, that the 

CCP is entitled to decide on major personnel appointments within the government. 

The defining feature of the Chinese political system has been, and continues to be, 

its Leninist structure, in which the state operates as the executor of decisions made 

by the Party. Although from time to time some top Chinese leaders have called for 

greater separation between the Party and the state and for more political participation from the public and social groups, the main objective of Chinese authorities has 

been, and is, the consolidation and revitalization of the Party leadership rather than 

the revision of the Leninist party-state system. The new catchphrase of the Chinese 

leadership under Hu Jintao is ‘‘enhance the governing capacity of the ruling party.’’ 

Huang Weiping, director of the Research Institute of Contemporary Chinese Politics at Shenzhen University, was involved in drafting the aforementioned guidelines 

on Shenzhen governmental reform. He recently offered a comprehensive explanation 

of the Chinese authorities’ position on the relationship between selection (xuanba) 

and election (xuanju). According to Huang, China is not going to replace selection 

with election in the choice of its political elites. As he noted, ‘‘selection is a principal 

system (da zhidu) while election is a periphery mechanism (xiao zhidu). The latter 

is supposed to supplement the former.’’ 10 In his view, public participation in elections could make up for the deficiency or inadequacy in the purely Leninist personnel appointment system. 

One should not, however, conclude too quickly that elections in present-day China 

are nothing but ‘‘political shows’’ to improve the image of the Chinese leadership. 

The Chinese leadership’s growing awareness of the need for elections is only partly 

driven by their concern for political legitimacy in this one-party state. The implementation of elections, one can argue, is a result of the transition in the Chinese 

political system from an all-powerful single leader, such as Mao or Deng, to a system ofcollective leadership, which has characterized both the Jiang and Hu eras. A 

review of thetransformation of Chinese elite politics under these four top leaders is 

quite revealing. 

Mao wielded enormous power as a godlike figure. His favorable words and personal endorsement were often the sole basis for the career advancement of many 

senior leaders. Deng Xiaoping, too, was a leader of monolithic proportions. Largely 

because of his legendary political career and his formidable patron-client ties, he 

was able to maintain his role as China’s paramount leader even when he did not 

hold any important leadership position following the Tiananmen incident. On the 

other hand, both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are technocrats who lack the charisma 

and revolutionary credentials of Mao and Deng, but who have broad administrative 

experience and are good at coalition-building and political compromise. Thus, the selection of political elites under these two men has been based largely on factional 

balance of power and deal-cutting. 

In general, the nature of collective leadership prevents the emergence of a new 

paramount leader and inhibits any single individual from completely controlling the 

political system. Consequently, the rules of the game in Chinese elite politics have 

changed; elections have increasingly become a new way for the CCP to attain the 

‘‘mandate of heaven.’’ The desire of Hu Jintao and other top Chinese leaders for the 

mandate explains why, in June 2007, they conducted a straw poll among several 

hundred ministerial and provincial leaders as well as their superiors in an effort 

to ‘‘gauge their preferences for candidates for the next Politburo and its Standing 

Committee.’’ 11

More specifically, greater attention should be given to intra-Party elections and 

the elections of people’s congresses. As for intra-Party elections, one may reasonably 

assume that the greatest challenge to the rule of the CCP comes not from outside 

forces but from forces within the Party. In the era of collective leadership, factional 

tensions and competition will likely make intra-Party elections both increasingly 

transparent and dynamic. 

28 

The election of deputies of the people’s congress at various levels of government 

is certainly not new in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). But for a long time 

the Chinese public has been cynical about the role of the people’s congresses. With 

a few exceptions, there has not been any real, open competition for the seats of the 

congress.12 This, however, may start to change in the near future for two reasons. 

First, three decades of market reforms have not only brought forth a wealthy entrepreneurial elite group and an ever-growing Chinese middle class, but have also created many less fortunate and increasingly marginalized socioeconomic groups. These 

less fortunate classes are growing ever more aware of the importance of being represented in the decision-making circles, including those of people’s congresses. Second, China confronts many daunting challenges, including economic disparity, employment pressure, environmental degradation, the lack of a social safety net, and 

growing tensions between the central and local governments. There is no easy solution to any of these problems, and Chinese leaders have different views and policy 

preferences for how to deal with them. In recent years, the people’s congress has 

become one of the most important venues for policy debates. This trend will further 

enhance the public participation in, and demand for, more genuine and fair elections 

in the people’s congress at various levels. Any serious effort to move toward competitive elections in China may release long-restrained social tensions and quickly undermine the CCP’s ability to allocate social and economic resources. 

The above observation makes clear that both intra-Party elections and the elections of the people’s congress deserve substantial scholarly attention. The information about types, procedures, and results of these elections is valuable for China analysts. Such information may reveal some important tensions and trends in Chinese 

politics. Intra-Party democracy is, of course, not true democracy, but it may pave 

the way for a more fundamental change in the Chinese political system. In the absence of a broad-based and well-organized political opposition in the PRC, it is unlikely that the country will develop a multi-party political system in the near future. 

This fact actually makes the ongoing experiments such as intra-Party elections and 

competitive elections for the people’s congress even more significant. 

ASSESSING INTRA-PARTY ELECTIONS

According to the terminology employed by the Chinese authorities, intra-Party democracy refers to five types of elections: direct elections, indirect elections, multicandidate elections, single-candidate elections, and preliminary elections.13

• A direct election (zhijie xuanju) is an election in which eligible members 

vote for their candidates directly. 

• Indirect election (jianjie xuanju) refers to an election in which all eligible 

members first vote for their representatives or delegates, who will then later 

vote for candidates in the Party Congress. 

• Multi-candidate election, or a ‘‘more candidates than seats election’’ (cha’e 

xuanju), refers to an election that has more candidates than the number of 

seats available. For example, if the Party authorities plan to form a 12-member 

party committee, they may place 15 names on the ballot. The three people who 

receive the lowest number of votes will not become members of the committee. 

• Single-candidate election (denge xuanju) means that the number of candidates equals the number of seats. In other words, there is only one candidate 

on the ballot for that position. The candidate will be elected if he or she receives 

more than 50 percent of the votes. Some Chinese critics believe that the singlecandidate election is, in fact, a selection or a confirmation of the appointments 

made by the Party authorities rather than a meaningful electoral competition.14

• Preliminary election (yuxuan) refers to an election in which eligible members first confirm the candidates on the ballot before casting their votes. 

At certain levels of CCP leadership, only one of these different sorts of election 

methods is employed. At other levels, multiple methods may be used together. For 

example, direct elections are usually used in the grassroots party organizations such 

as village Party branches. The CCP members vote directly to elect the Party secretary and committee members of their Party branch. In 2008, about 2,000 townlevel Party committees in the country also conducted direct elections.15 The other 

four kinds of elections are, in fact, all used in the National Congress of the CCP. 

The National Congress of the CCP, which has convened once every five years 

since 1977, is the most important political convention in the country. There are two 

kinds of delegates: invited and regular. The 17th Party Congress held in 2007, for 

example, had a total number of 2,270 delegates, including 57 invited delegates and 

2,213 regular delegates. These 57 invited delegates were mostly Party elders who 

can be considered China’s equivalent to the ‘‘superdelegates’’ of the United States’ 

major political parties. Like the regular delegates, they were eligible to vote. The 

29 

2,213 regular delegates came from 38 constituencies. These included representatives 

from China’s 31 province-level administrations, a delegation of ethnic Taiwanese, 

one from the central departments of the Party, one from the ministries and commissions of the central government, one from the major state-owned enterprises, one 

comprised of representatives from China’s large banks and other financial institutions, and delegations from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and People’s Armed 

Police. All 38 constituencies went through multi-candidate elections in forming their 

delegations, with the CCP Organization Department requiring that there be at least 

15 percent more candidates on the ballots than the number of delegates making up 

the representative body headed to the congress.16 This was 5 percent more than was 

the case at the 16th Party Congress in 2002.17

The National Congress of the CCP elects the Central Committee (CC). In theory, 

the Central Committee then elects the Politburo, the Politburo Standing Committee 

(PBSC), and the general secretary of the Party. In practice, the members of these 

peak organs of the Party have always guided the selection of members to the lowerranking leadership bodies, including the Central Committee, which in turn ‘‘approves’’ the slate of candidates for the Politburo and the PBSC. Thus, the notion 

that the Central Committee ‘‘elects’’ the Politburo is something of a fiction. The 

members of these decision-making bodies are generally selected by either the previous PBSC or some heavyweight political figures. Outgoing PBSC members often 

ensure that their proteges will have seats in the next Politburo or PBSC as part 

of a deal in exchange for their own retirement. For example, it was widely reported 

in the Hong Kong and overseas media that Zeng Qinghong was willing to vacate 

his seat on the 17th PBSC in order to let his three proteges (Xi Jinping, Zhou 

Yongkang, and He Guoqiang) obtain membership in this supreme leadership body. 

It would be wrong, however, to assert that there is no intra-party competition for 

Central Committee seats. Since the 13th National Congress of the CCP in 1982, 

Chinese authorities have adopted cha’e xuanju for the election to the Central Committee. The 2002 Party Congress had 5.1 percent more candidates than available 

full membership seats and 5.7 percent more candidates for alternate membership 

seats.18 In the 2007 Party Congress, the delegates voted to elect 204 full members 

from the total number of 221 candidates (8.3 percent more) on the ballot. As for alternate members, the delegates voted to elect 167 alternates from the total number 

of 183 candidates (9.6 percent more) on the ballot.19

Prior to these ‘‘more candidates than seats’’ elections, the CCP Organization Department also holds a preliminary election in each and every delegation during the 

Party Congress to confirm these two lists of candidates—one for full members and 

the other for alternates. If some candidates favored by the top leadership or designated Politburo members received a very low number of votes during the preliminary election in a given delegation, the top leaders would make an effort to persuade delegates in the delegation to change their minds before the formal election. 

In a way, this preliminary election not only helps prevent ‘‘big surprises’’ in the result of later elections, but also serves as a Chinese-style lobbying to ensure that 

those candidates favored by top leaders ultimately emerge victorious from the multicandidate elections. 

Despite efforts by the CCP authorities to control the results of these elections, delegates to the Party Congress sometimes decide to vote against the ‘‘Party line.’’ As 

a result, some candidates earmarked by top authorities to take on important positions do not get elected to the CC. For example, during the 13th Party Congress, 

Deng Liqun, a conservative hardliner and 12th Politburo member, lost a bid for reelection to the 13th CC.20 Xiao Yang, former Party secretary of Chongqing, who was 

reportedly chosen by Deng Xiaoping and other veteran leaders to be a Politburo 

member on the 14th CC, did not even get enough votes for full membership on the 

CC. The strongest evidence of opposition to nepotism in the election of CC members 

is that a number of princelings (children of high-ranking officials) on the ballot for 

the CC did not get elected despite (or perhaps because of) their privileged family 

backgrounds. In the 15th Party Congress, for example, several princelings, including 

Chen Yuan, Wang Jun, and Bo Xilai, were among the 5 percent of candidates who 

were defeated. This despite the fact that all of their fathers had served as vice-premiers. 

Complete information about who failed to be elected in these ‘‘more candidates 

than seats’’ elections is not made available to the public, but it is interesting to see 

the list of elected alternate members who received the lowest number of votes in 

the CC elections. According to CCP norms, the list of all of the full members of the 

CC is ordered by the number of strokes in the Chinese characters of their names, 

but the list of the alternate members is arranged in accordance with the number 

of votes they received in elections. Table 1 shows the alternate members who reVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
30 

ceived the lowest number of votes in the Central Committee elections of the CCP 

from 1982 to 2008. All of them have very strong patron-client ties with top leaders. 

TABLE 1—THE PATRON-CLIENT BACKGROUNDS OF THOSE ALTERNATE MEMBERS WHO RECEIVED THE LOWEST NUMBER OF VOTES IN THE ELECTIONS

OF THE 12TH THROUGH 17TH CCP CENTRAL COMMITTEES (1982–2007) 

Party 

Congress 

Total 

number 

of alternate 

members 

Alternate member 

with lowest number 

of votes 

Patron-Client background Position when elected Highest position attained 

17th .....

(2007) ..

167 Jia Ting’an ......... Personal assistant to Jiang 

Zemin.

Director, General Office 

of the Central Military Commission.

Deputy Director, PLA 

Political Department. 

16th .....

(2002) ..

158 You Xigui ........... Bodyguard to Jiang Zemin ..... Director of the CCP 

Central Guard Bureau.

Deputy Director, General Office of the 

CCP Central Committee. 

15th .....

(1997) ..

151 Xi Jinping ........... Son of Xi Zhongxun (Vice-Premier), personal assistant 

to Geng Biao (Minister of 

Defense).

Deputy Party Secretary 

of Fujian Province.

Standing Member of 

Politburo, Vice President of PRC. 

14th .....

(1992) ..

130 Xiao Yang .......... Protege of Deng Xiaoping ...... Party Secretary of 

Chongqing.

Governor of Sichuan 

Province. 

13th .....

(1987) ..

110 Huang Ju ............ Chief of Staff to Jiang Zemin Deputy Party Secretary 

of Shanghai.

Standing Member of 

Politburo, Executive 

Vice-Premier. 

12th .....

(1982) ..

138 Wang Dongxing .. Bodyguard to Mao Zedong ..... Vice President of the 

Central Party School.

Vice Chairman, CCP 

Central Committee. 

Sources and Notes: The CCP Organization Department and the Research Office of the History of the Chinese Communist Party, comp., Zhongguo gongchandang lijie zhongyang weiyuan dacidian, 1921–2003 [Who’s Who of the Members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committees, 1921–2003] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2004). For the 17th Central Committee, see www.xinhuanet.com. 

Jia Ting’an, the alternate member who received the lowest number of votes in the 

17th Party Congress, was a longtime personal assistant to Jiang Zemin. In the previous Party congress, the alternate member with the poorest score was You Xigui, 

Jiang Zemin’s bodyguard. Xi Jinping, now the leading candidate to succeed Hu 

Jintao in the next Party congress, received the lowest number of votes among the 

151 alternate members elected to the 15th Party Congress in 1997. Xi was not only 

the product of a high-ranking official family, but also served as personal assistant 

to former Minister of Defense Geng Biao. As mentioned earlier, Xiao Yang, a protege of Deng Xiaoping, did not receive enough votes for a full membership seat at 

the 14th Party Congress election. He was then placed on the ballot for an alternate 

membership seat. Although he was eventually elected as an alternate member, Xiao 

embarrassingly received the lowest number of votes among those elected. The alternate member elected to the 13th CC with the lowest number of votes was Huang 

Ju, a prominent member of the so-called Shanghai Gang who later obtained a seat 

on the PBSC. Huang served as the chief of staff for Jiang Zemin when Jiang was 

the Party boss in Shanghai. The 12th Party Congress did not adopt the ‘‘more candidates than seats’’ election process. Thus, all candidates on the ballot were elected. 

In that election, Wang Dongxing, former bodyguard to Mao and former vice chairman of the CCP Central Committee, was at the very bottom of the list of alternate 

members in number of votes received. 

Some other leaders with strong patron-client ties were among the 10 elected alternate members who received the lowest number of votes in recent Party congresses. 

They included princelings such as Deng Pufang, Wang Qishan, Lou Jiwei, and Qiao 

Zonghuai. Jiang Zemin’s proteges Huang Liman and Xiong Guangkai and Hu 

Jintao’s chief of staff, Ling Jihua, also scored very poorly in these elections. The results of all these elections seem to suggest that princeling backgrounds and strong 

patron-client ties, which likely helped accelerate political advancement early in the 

proteges’ careers, may have become a political liability for them as they rose to the 

31 

national leadership. Some princelings, however, later improved their popularity in 

elections by demonstrating their leadership capacity and good performance. For example, Wang Qishan took the post of acting mayor of Beijing in the peak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003. His effective leadership 

during the crisis earned him the reputation as the ‘‘chief of the fire brigade.’’ In the 

Beijing municipal congress meeting in 2004, Wang was confirmed mayor of Beijing 

with 742 ‘‘yes’’ votes and only one ‘‘no’’ vote from the delegates.21

Intra-Party elections are, of course, often subject to political manipulation by the 

top leaders. For CCP members and delegates, the choices in the various kinds of 

intra-Party elections are still very limited. The fact that delegates to the Party congress often use their limited voting power to exercise ‘‘democratic rights’’ to block 

the election of leaders with strong nepotistic advantages may make the CCP authorities more cautious about democratic experiments. From the perspective of the 

CCP leadership, China’s political reforms should be incremental and manageable in 

scale. Nevertheless, the Chinese authorities claim that there will be an ever-increasing number of candidates in future elections to the CC. Such a method may even 

apply to the formation of the Politburo in the near future. According to the Chinese 

leadership, these intra-Party elections are important components of political reforms 

designed to gradually make China’s party-state system more transparent, competitive, and representative. 

RETHINKING THE ELECTION OF THE PEOPLE’S CONGRESS

Elections in present-day China are not administratively neutral. The CCP strictly 

controls both the election organizations and the election process. Party chiefs at various levels of the administration often concurrently serve as chairmen of the election 

committees. There are, however, three separate organizational systems in charge of 

elections in the country, namely: the CCP organization departments in various levels of the Party committees, the people’s congresses; and civil affairs departments 

in various levels of government.22 A comparison of the three shows that the election 

system of the people’s congress is more institutionalized and more transparent than 

the CCP organization and civil affairs departments. 

The five levels of the administration of the PRC—township, county, municipal, 

provincial, and national—all have their own people’s congresses. Delegates for the 

people’s congress are all supposed to be elected—via direct election for townshiplevel and indirect election for the county-level and above.23 As for the National People’s Congress (NPC), its delegates are allocated according to the population of a 

given province. The province with the smallest population is guaranteed at least 15 

delegates. Special administrative regions such as Hong Kong and Macau have their 

quotas of delegates, as does the PLA. Based on the 1995 census, every 880,000 people in a given rural administrative unit, and every 220,000 people in an urban area 

select one delegate to the NPC. In recent years, some public intellectuals and local 

officials, especially delegates from the rural areas, have been criticizing this bias in 

favor of urban areas.24 In the elections for the delegates to the 11th NPC, some electoral districts—for example, the Zichuan District in Shandong’s Zibo City—abolished 

the urban-rural differentiation. This was called one of the 10 biggest breakthroughs 

in the constitutional development of the PRC in 2007.25 Since that time, some other 

counties and cities have begun to follow the lead of Zichuan District in their own 

local elections.26

Like the National Congress of the CCP, the National People’s Congress selects 

new leadership every five years at a meeting usually held in the spring of the year 

following the Party congress. The 11th NPC, which was formed in March 2008, consisted of 2,987 delegates. The 11th NPC also adopted the ‘‘more candidates than 

seats’’ electoral process in choosing the members of the Standing Committee (a total 

of 161 seats). There were 7 percent more candidates (a total of 173) on the ballot 

than there were seats.27 In theory, NPC delegates are not only supposed to elect 

the members of their congress’s Standing Committee, but are also entitled to elect 

the president and vice president of the PRC, the chairman of the Central Military 

Commission (CMC), the chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court, and the chief 

of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. They are also empowered to approve the premier as well as the other members of the State Council and CMC. In reality, however, all these candidates are nominated by the NPC Presidium (zhuxituan), which 

simply passes on the list of nominees designated for appointment by the Central 

Committee of the CCP to the NPC. None of these leadership positions is chosen 

through multi-candidate elections. 

An interesting phenomenon is that the delegates of the NPC are now often voting 

against some top leaders in the confirmation process, voicing their dissent about political nepotism or favoritism by certain senior leaders or factions. For example, the 

32 

‘‘Shanghai Gang,’’ the leaders who advanced their careers from Shanghai largely 

due to their patron-client ties with Jiang, usually scored very poorly in these elections. 

Table 2 shows the results of the elections of the top two leaders of five national 

institutions elected at the 10th NPC and Chinese People’s Political Consultative 

Conference (CPPCC) held in 2003. Jiang Zemin and his proteges are indicated in 

boldface. Their scores are not nearly as impressive as those of their counterparts. 

While Hu Jintao lost only seven votes (four ‘‘no’’ votes and three abstentions) out 

of 2,944 valid votes at the 10th NPC for the confirmation of his presidency, Jiang 

received 98 ‘‘no’’ votes and 122 abstentions out of 2,946 valid votes in the confirmation of his chairmanship of the Central Military Commission. Zeng Qinghong received only 87.5 percent of ‘‘yes’’ votes—out of 2,945 valid votes, there were 177 ‘‘no’’ 

votes and 190 abstentions. Other longtime proteges of Jiang suffered similar humiliation, including Executive Vice Premier Huang Ju, who received an embarrassingly 

low number of votes in his confirmation as vice-premier of the State Council, and 

Jia Qinglin, who won only 88.5 percent of the votes for his position in the CPPCC 

election. Among the 29 ministers elected to the 10th NPC, Governor of the People’s 

Bank Zhou Xiaochuan, who was known for his strong patron-client ties with Jiang, 

received the lowest number of votes.28 The overwhelming support for Hu Jintao and 

Wen Jiabao as evident in the vote counts at the 10th NPC explains why they have 

been able to make remarkable socioeconomic policy changes, downplaying Jiang’s 

elitist approach in favor of their own populist agenda.29

TABLE 2—VOTE COUNTS OF THE TWO TOP LEADERS IN THE FIVE NATIONAL

INSTITUTIONS IN THE 10TH NPC & CPPCC ELECTIONS (2003) 

Power Institution No. 1 Leader Yes vote 

(percent) No. 2 leader Yes vote (percent) 

PRC Presidency ......................................... Hu Jintao ....................... 99 .8 Zeng Qinghong .............. 87 .5 

State Central Military Commission .......... Jiang Zemin ................... 92 .5 Hu Jintao ....................... 99 .7 

State Council ............................................ Wen Jiabao .................... 99 .3 Huang Ju ....................... 91 .8 

NPC ........................................................... Wu Bangguo .................. 98 .9 Wang Zhaoguo ............... 99 .2 

CPPCC ....................................................... Jia Qinglin ..................... 88 .5 Wang Zhongyu ............... 98 .3 

Note: The names of Jiang Zemin and his proteges appear in boldface. 

Source: Originally viewed at http://www.bbs.xilubbs.com. Also see Cheng Li, ‘‘The ‘New Deal’: Politics and Policies of the Hu Administra- tion,’’ Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 38, nos. 4–5 (December 2003): 329–346. 

Table 3 shows the vote counts for the chairman, vice chairmen, and general secretary who were elected at the 11th NPC in March 2008. Hua Jianmin and Chen 

Zhili, two prominent members of the Shanghai Gang, received the highest numbers 

of ‘‘no’’ and ‘‘abstention’’ votes. In contrast, two vice chairmen with ethnic minority 

backgrounds, Uyunqimg (a Mongolian) and Ismail Tiliwaldi (a Uighur), received the 

highest numbers of ‘‘yes’’ votes. Among these 15 vice chairmen, six were not members of the CCP. These leaders represent the so-called democratic parties (minzhu 

dangpai) in the PRC and they also received relatively higher numbers of ‘‘yes’’ 

votes.30 These ‘‘democratic parties’’ are, of course, all too small to compete with, or 

challenge, the CCP in any meaningful way. As of 2007, the membership numbers 

of these parties ranged from 2,100 (the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government 

League) to 181,000 (the China Democratic League). Their representation in the NPC 

is largely symbolic. Nevertheless, it is important to note that an increasing number 

of candidates who are not CCP members have recently participated in the people’s 

congress elections. In 2003, there were only about 100 candidates for the position 

of delegate at people’s congresses who were not designated by the local authorities. 

In 2007, the number of such candidates increased to almost 10,000.31

TABLE 3—VOTE COUNTS FOR THE CHAIRMAN, VICE CHAIRMEN, AND GENERAL SECRETARY ELECTED IN THE 11TH NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS

(2008) 

NPC Position Name Background CCP Total 

votes For Against Abstain 

Chairman .............. Wu Bangguo ........ CCP, member of Politburo Standing 

Committee.

Yes 2,966 2,948 9 9 

33 

TABLE 3—VOTE COUNTS FOR THE CHAIRMAN, VICE CHAIRMEN, AND GENERAL SECRETARY ELECTED IN THE 11TH NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS

(2008)—CONTINUED

NPC Position Name Background CCP Total 

votes For Against Abstain 

Vice chairman ...... Wang Zhaoguo .... CCP, Politburo member; chairman, 

All-China Federation of Trade 

Unions.

Yes 2,964 2,947 11 6 

Vice chairman ...... Lu Yongxiang ....... CCP, president of China’s Academy 

of Sciences.

Yes 2,964 2,940 11 13 

Vice chairman ...... Uyunqimg ............ CCP, former governor of Neimenggu 

(Mongolia).

Yes 2,964 2,956 5 3 

Vice chairman ...... Han Qide ............. Chairman, Jiusha Society; chairman, 

China Association of Scientists.

No .. 2,964 2,950 9 5 

Vice chairman ...... Hua Jianmin ........ CCP, former State Councilor, member of the Shanghai Gang.Yes 2,964 2,901 48 15 

Vice chairman ...... Chen Zhili ............ CCP, former State Councilor, member of the Shanghai Gang.Yes 2,964 2,816 112 36 

Vice chairman ...... Zhou Tienong ....... Chairman, Revolutionary Committee 

of the Chinese Nationalist Party.

No .. 2,964 2,934 20 10 

Vice chairman ...... Li Jianguo ............ CCP, former personal assistant to Li 

Ruihuan.

Yes 2,964 2,911 39 14 

Vice chairman ...... Ismail Tiliwaldi .... CCP, former governor of Xinjiang .... Yes 2,964 2,957 5 2 

Vice chairman ...... Jiang Shusheng ... Chairman, China Democratic League No .. 2,964 2,948 11 5 

Vice chairman ...... Chen Changzhi .... Chairman, China National Democratic Construction Association.No .. 2,964 2,941 13 10 

Vice chairman ...... Yan Junqi ............ Chairman, China Association for 

Promoting Democracy.

No .. 2,964 2,945 11 8 

Vice chairman ...... Sang Weiguo ....... Chairman, Chinese Peasants’ and 

Workers’ Democratic Party.

No .. 2,964 2,935 18 11 

General secretary .. Li Jianguo ............ See above .......................................... Yes 2,965 2,932 25 8 

Source: www.chinesenewsnet.com, 15 March 2008. 

Jiang Zemin’s proteges fared as poorly in the election at the 11th NPC as they 

did in those at the 10th, again receiving the lowest number of votes in the confirmation of ministers of the State Council. It was reported in the Hong Kong and overseas media that, of the total of 2,946 valid votes, Minister of Education Zhou Ji had 

384 ‘‘no’’ votes and Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun had 211 ‘‘no’’ votes. State Councilor Ma Kai also received 117 ‘‘no’’ votes. Their poor vote counts might be due partly to the fact that all three were known as Jiang’s proteges, and partly to the fact 

that the delegates were concerned about China’s educational problems as well as 

some serious train accidents that had recently occurred.32 Although these vote 

counts usually do not block the confirmation of the candidates, they might jeopardize some political leaders’ chance for further promotion. For example, the strong 

opposition to Ma Kai’s promotion expressed by the delegates and standing committee members of the NPC was widely believed to be the reason he later failed to 

gain a Politburo membership seat.33 Consequently, he was not considered for a vicepremiership. 

The growing importance of the people’s congress in the confirmation process has 

convinced some Chinese officials to try political lobbying. For example, in 2007, Li 

Junqu, assistant governor of Hebei Province, bribed several delegates of the provincial people’s congress in order to be nominated and confirmed for the post of vice 

governor.34 Similarly, Li Tangtang, vice governor of Shaanxi Province, urged eight 

34 

friends or colleagues of his to make phone calls and send text messages to 50 officials, asking them to vote for him. Although Li Tangtang did not bribe anyone, his 

lobbying activities were still considered illegal under CCP regulations. During the 

past two years, the CCP Organization Department uncovered 121 similar cases of 

political lobbying or other ‘‘wrongdoings’’ among officials at the county level or 

above.35

FINAL THOUGHTS

Intra-party democracy is, of course, not real democracy. In terms of electoral competition for selecting state leaders, China still has a long way to go. Yet, the recent 

political experiments in both the CCP leadership and the people’s congresses are unlikely be a static phenomenon. Political lobbying and negative campaigns, which are 

now officially prohibited, will probably develop in the future given the introduction 

of limited political competition. Elections to the Central Committee are also likely 

to become more competitive as time passes. Over time, Chinese politicians will become more and more familiar with the new ‘‘rules of the game’’ in elite politics. As 

a result, the country may soon witness an even more dynamic phase in the evolution of Chinese politics. At the same time, the people of China may begin to ask 

why only the Party elites, and not the public at large, have the opportunity to enjoy 

‘‘democracy.’’ They will likely call for more genuine and fair elections to select local 

government leaders, especially the delegates to the people’s congresses. To a certain 

extent, this process has already begun, and will undoubtedly have a profound impact on state-society relations in the country. 

It is still too early to conclude that China is in the midst of a historic transition 

from selection to election in the recruitment of political elites. The Chinese political 

system is still predominantly a Leninist party state in which the CCP monopolizes 

all the most important posts in the government. Yet, the formats, procedures, and 

results of these limited and partially controlled elections are enormously valuable 

to our understanding of Chinese politics today. They not only reveal the factional 

tensions and behavioral patterns of the CCP leaders, but are also indicative of the 

policy orientation, public opinions, and political choices of the leaders in this rapidly 

changing country. 

NOTES

1The author is indebted to Yinsheng Li for his research assistance. The author also thanks 

Sally Carman and Robert O’Brien for suggesting ways in which to clarify the article. 2This documentary film has been widely viewed on YouTube. See http://www.youtube.com/ 

watch ?v=-Jkaij-51tU. 3See http://www.ccdtr.org/index.php/docs/41. 

4The CCP Organization Department, ‘‘Dangzheng lingdao ganbu xuanba renyong gongzuo 

tiaoli’’ [The regulations of selection and appointment of the Party and government leaders], 

2002. See http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2003-01/18/content—695422.htm. For the updated Q 

& A made by the CCP Organization Department in 2005, see http://www.mot.gov.cn/zizhan/siju/ 

renlaosi/zhengceguiding/ lingdaoganbu—GL/kaoheyurenmian/200709/t20070920—401063.html. 5Shu Taifeng, ‘‘Shenzhen Zhenggai toushi wenlu’’ [Experiments of political reforms in 

Shenzhen], Liaowang dongfang zhoukan (Oriental Outlook Weekly), http://news.sohu.com/ 

20080707/n257998881.shtml. 6Shenzhen’s total registered population is about 3 million, but the real number of residents 

including migrant workers totals 10 million. Some members of the provincial People’s Congress 

recently argued that every resident in Shenzhen above the legal age for voting should be entitled to vote, not just the registered residents. Nanfang dushi bao (Southern Metropolitan Daily), 

13 August 2008; see http://news.southcn.com/gdnews/nanyuedadi/content/2008-08/13/content— 

4535126.htm. 7See Liu Xiaojing, ‘‘Shenzhen ni tuixing shizhang cha’e xuanju waimei jianyi sheli zhengzhi 

tequ’’ [Shenzhen plans to select its mayor though a multi-candidate election: Foreign media suggest that the city become a special political zone]. Guoji xianqu daobao (International Herald), 

20 June 2008, http://news.sohu.com/20080620/n257623652.shtml. 8See Cheng Li, ‘‘Hu’s Southern Expedition: Changing Leadership in Guangdong,’’ China Leadership Monitor 24 (Spring 2008). 9Shu Taifeng, ‘‘Shenzhen Zhenggai toushi wenlu.’’ 

10Quoted in Shu Taifeng, ‘‘Shenzhen Zhenggai toushi wenlu.’’ 11 John L. Thornton, ‘‘Long Time Coming: The Prospects for Democracy in China.’’ Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 1 (January/February 2008). 12One exception was the widely noticed election for the delegates for the Haidian District People’s Congress in the early 1980s. See http://www.66wen.com/03fx/shehuixue/shehuigongzuo/ 

20061109/28740.html. 13See http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2007-10/08/content—6843377—6.htm. 14 Cai Xia, ‘‘Dangnei minzhu tansuo yu wenti’’ [Inner-Party democracy: Experiments and problems], http://www.world-china.org/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2167. 15 Ibid. 16See http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2006-11/12/content—5319132.htm. 17See http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-08/03/content—6470512.htm. 

35 

18 See http://news.eastday.com/c/shiqida/u1a3177599.html. 19See http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-10/21/content—6918611—4.htm. 20Deng Liqun discussed this episode in his memoir, Shi’erge Chunqiu: Deng Liqun zishu [12 

Years: Deng Liqun’s Account]. Hong Kong: Dafeng chubanshe, 2006. 21 Xinjing bao (New Beijing daily), 23 February 2004, p. 1. 22 i Fan, ‘‘Jianli gongzheng xuanju zhidu de zhongyao yihuan: Zhongguo xuanju zuzhi jigou 

de gaige’’ [A key in the establishment of a fair election system: The reform of China’s election 

organizations]. Beijing yu fenxi (Backgrounds and Analysis), no. 152 (August 2008): 1. 23For details of the People’s Congress elections at various levels, see http:// 

news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2003-08/22/content—1039490.htm. 24For example, see Mo Jihong, ‘‘Zhubu jianli geng pingdeng de renda daibiao xuanju zhidu’’ 

[Gradually establishing a more fair and competitive election system for deputies of the people’s 

congress]. http://www.world-china.org/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2070. 25See http://news.sohu.com/20080317/n255736788.shtml. 26 Ibid. 27 In the 10th NPC, there were 5 percent more candidates on the ballot than the number of 

seats up for election. See http://news.sohu.com/20080317/n255736788.shtml. 28 In the total of 2,935 valid votes, Zhou received 163 ‘‘no’’ votes and 49 ‘‘abstention’’ votes. 29For a more detailed discussion of policy changes from the Jiang administration to the HuWen administration, see Barry Naughton, ‘‘China’s Left Tilt: Pendulum Swing or Midcourse Correction? ’’ in Cheng Li, ed., China’s Changing Political Landscape: Prospects for Democracy. 

Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008, pp. 142—158. 30The Chinese authorities often claim that the PRC has eight other political parties, which 

are often collectively referred to as ‘‘democratic parties.’’ These are: the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party, the China Democratic League, the China National 

Democratic Construction Association, the China Association for Promoting Democracy, the Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party, the China Zhi Gong Dang, the Jiu San Society, 

and the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League. 31See http://www.world-china.org/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2021. 32Shijie ribao (World Journal), 18 March 2008, p. A12. 33This was based on the author’s interviews in Beijing in 2007 and 2008. 34 See http://www.stnn.cc/ed—china/200712/t20071218—694717.html. 35See http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-02-05/152012234762.shtml. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MELANIE MANION

MAY 22, 2009

From the 1950s through the 1980s, American scholars and policy makers easily 

and appropriately dismissed the ‘‘people’s congresses’’ of elected legislative representatives in mainland China as ‘‘rubber stamps.’’ Yet, in recent years, without 

challenging the communist party monopoly, the Chinese congresses have become 

significant political players. They veto government reports, they quiz and dismiss 

officials, and they reject candidates selected by the communist party for leadership. 

The liveliest congresses are found not at the center of power in Beijing nor in provincial capitals, but below—in the cities, counties, and townships. 

The new assertiveness of local congresses is not a grassroots movement. It was 

set in motion by rules designed and promoted by authoritarian rulers in Beijing. 

Understanding what has (and has not) changed in these local congresses is a window on the ‘‘officially acceptable’’ meaning of representative democracy in mainland 

China today. 

My argument this morning is that congressional empowerment exemplifies a difficult, risky, strategic, and partly successful communist party effort to strengthen 

authoritarianism by opening up politics to new players, giving them procedural status in the political game, and accepting losses in particular instances in order to 

win the bigger prize of authoritarian persistence. It is a difficult effort because a 

legacy of congressional irrelevance cannot be easily erased in the minds of ordinary 

voters and local party and government officials. It is a risky effort because credibility requires that the effort go beyond authoritarian ‘‘cheap talk’’—but the regime 

certainly does not want to encourage runaway democratization in the form of new 

democratic parties or too many ‘‘independent candidates.’’ It is a strategic effort in 

the sense that it is designed not to promote liberal democracy but to strengthen authoritarian rule with more responsive political institutions under the guardianship 

of a single communist party. 

Finally, the effort is only partly successful. Local congress representatives see 

themselves as substantive political players with electoral legitimacy, not the congressional puppets of the Maoist era. This is especially the case in congresses at 

lower levels. Popularly elected congress representatives speak and act the new language of voting districts, constituents, and constituent interests. They help constituents with private matters and work to provide local public goods. They see this as 

their most important responsibility. They see their second most important responsibility as electing government leaders, in this quasi-parliamentary system. In electing 

36 

government leaders, local congresses are not the simple stooges of local communist 

party committees, as they were in the past. In nominating candidates for government leadership, communist party committees can no longer treat the congresses as 

reliable voting machines. When local communist party committees fail to take local 

interests into account in nominating their candidates for leadership, these party 

committee candidates can and do lose. Again, this is especially the case in congresses at lower levels. 

At the same time and despite official voter turnout figures of over 90 percent, reliable survey evidence indicates that very high proportions of ordinary Chinese know 

little or nothing about local congress candidates on election day, say they didn’t vote 

in the most recent congress election, and can recall nothing their congress representatives have done in the past term. Most alarmingly for the Chinese authorities, these proportions have increased, not decreased, over the past fifteen years. In 

short, if local congress representatives now think and act as agents of their constituents, it is not because ordinary Chinese voters see themselves as principals. Put another way, if representative democracy is working, most ordinary Chinese do not yet 

see it that way. 

To understand these different perspectives, it is useful to understand what has 

and has not changed in the rules. 

Let me first summarize a few important unchanged features of Chinese representative democracy. First, direct electoral participation by ordinary Chinese is restricted to the lowest congress levels. Only township and county congresses are 

elected in popular elections. Above the county level, elections only involve congress 

insiders: each congress is elected by the congress below it. This reflects an elitist 

notion of guardianship that is both Leninist and traditionally Chinese. Second, congresses are large and unwieldy, they meet infrequently, and most representatives 

are amateurs with neither the time nor material resources for congressional work. 

The working congresses are the much smaller standing committees—but not all 

standing committee members at all levels work full time for the congresses, and 

there are no standing committees at the lowest congress level. Large amateur congresses reflect a Marxist view that only by continuing to work on the front line at 

the grassroots can representatives forge a meaningful relationship with their constituents. Finally and not least of all, a single communist party monopolizes political 

power. Competing political parties are banned, as are inner-party factions. This is 

important in at least two ways. Communists numerically dominate all Chinese congresses at all levels: they make up about 65 percent of township congresses and 

about 70 percent of congresses above this level. As a matter of organizational discipline, the communist party should be able to impose its will on all congresses. A 

second consequence of communist party monopoly has to do with interest representation. Without competitive interest aggregation along party (or any other) lines, 

‘‘party’’ has no meaning as an organizing category for voters. Voters cannot sort out 

representatives and assign, through votes in popular elections, credit or blame for 

governance outcomes. Put another way, the communist party monopoly strips representatives of labels that reflect policy orientations. This places a truly impossible 

information burden on voters. 

Let me turn now to what has changed. In the interests of time, I focus on the 

most fundamental set of rules: congressional electoral reform, particularly direct 

popular elections of congresses at lower levels. In 1979, the first local congress elections of the post-Mao era introduced three new electoral rules: elections must be 

contested, voting must be by secret ballot, and groups of ordinary voters may nominate candidates. These rules are a radical departure from Maoist-era practices, and 

they remain the basic organizing principles of congress elections today. These and 

other electoral rules created new opportunities for ordinary Chinese and new challenges for the authorities. 

For example, voter nomination of candidates mobilizes ordinary Chinese to bring 

them into the electoral process at the very beginning—only to disappoint them, even 

before election day. Any group of ten voters may nominate a candidate. This is a 

low threshold of support. One result is a large number of voter-nominated candidates—tens, sometimes even hundreds of candidates for two or three congress 

seats. Winners in congress elections must win a majority (not plurality) of votes. To 

produce a decisive election, the rules set a ceiling of no more than twice the number 

of candidates on the ballot as congress seats. By default, the process of winnowing 

out many tens of candidates to choose a few candidates for the ballot must eliminate 

a large number of voter nominees. Most nominees are passive: they do not take the 

initiative to seek congressional office. Only small proportions of voter nominees are 

‘‘independent candidates,’’ who orchestrate their nomination by voters and actively 

seek office to promote individual or collective goals. 

37 

The law permits independent candidates, but there are plenty of ways for election 

committees to harass them—and this harassment is routine in many localities. In 

addition, the election committees manage the pivotal winnowing out process, which 

is much criticized as a ‘‘black box.’’ Election committees are also instructed to induce 

congresses that satisfy certain electoral quotas—20 percent women, for example. To 

reduce electoral uncertainty created by contestation, the winnowing out process 

takes these quotas into consideration. Overall, candidates nominated by the party 

and party-controlled organizations do better than voter nominees in this process and 

they also do better in the elections. This creates a credibility problem. In the words 

of two pre-eminent Chinese congress scholars: ‘‘This situation disappoints voters, 

[especially] voters who nominate candidates, and leads to suspicion about the fairness of the elections.’’ 

From initial nomination of candidates to election day is a mere 15 days. Electoral 

campaigns are prohibited by law. With little time and without campaigns or competitive party labels, a high proportion of Chinese vote blindly. In the late 1990s, 

some localities allowed election committees to arrange face-to-face meetings between 

candidates and voters and organized de facto primary elections. The system did not 

implode with this modest local tinkering. Indeed, the political center responded: in 

2004 the electoral law was revised to include these features. 

Let me conclude. I commented earlier that if representative democracy is working, 

most ordinary Chinese do not yet see it that way. What has and has not changed 

in the rules that govern congresses and congress elections goes some way toward 

explaining this. 

Representative democracy in mainland China is not authoritarian ‘‘cheap talk.’’ At 

this point in time, however, it remains essentially a game of congress insiders. For 

them, what is most salient about elections is a new electoral uncertainty: with secret ballots and electoral contestation, they can lose. As winners, then, they have 

electoral legitimacy. Representatives in popularly elected congresses think and act 

as agents of their constituents. By contrast, ordinary Chinese pay attention to local 

congresses once every five years, when they are mobilized to vote in elections that 

are not yet well structured to generate their interest. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF YAWEI LIU

MAY 22, 2009

OLD AND NEW ASSESSMENTS

On April 1, 2009, the New China News Agency filed a wire story featuring a conversation among three prominent Chinese scholars on the current status of village 

elections in China. According to these scholars, a fair evaluation of the 20-year-old 

practice can be summarized by the following: 

(1) China’s rural residents have acquired a much keener sense of democracy, 

rule of law and individual rights; 

(2) The electoral procedures have become more standardized. The best indicator of this is the wide use of secret ballot booths on election day; 

(3) These elections have become more competitive and open; 

(4) Voter participation has become more rational; 

(5) The election outcome is largely positive with those elected being technically capable, market savvy and qualified to lead villagers to a more prosperous life; 

(6) The decisionmaking and daily administration of village affairs have become 

more democratic with the creation of villager representative assemblies and 

adoption of village charters; 

(7) The relationship between rural residents and the Party/state has significantly improved as a result of these elections. 

About seven years ago, on July 8, 2002, I spoke at the Roundtable organized by 

CECC on village elections in China and offered the following assessment on the status of village elections: 

(1) Elections have provided a safety valve for hundreds of millions of Chinese 

peasants who are angry and confused as their lives are often subject to constant 

exploitation and pressure; 

(2) They have introduced legal election procedures into a culture that has 

never entertained open and free elections; 

(3) They have cultivated a new system of values, a much-needed sense of political ownership and rights awareness among the Chinese peasants that do not 

have any leverage in bargaining with the heavy-handed government. 

38 

In addition to the above, I also tentatively described three potential effects of village elections: (1) direct village elections are a right accorded to the least educated 

and most conservative group of Chinese society and other groups might demand the 

same right; (2) free and open choice was made possible by free nomination and 

secret balloting and the same set of procedures might be used by the personnel apparatus at higher levels of the Chinese government in promotion; and (3) village 

elections offered a neat blueprint for the vast and populous Chinese nation to slowly 

move up the electoral ladder and fulfill what Deng Xiaoping once pledged: China 

would have free, direct national elections in 50 years. 

If one compares the assessments of village elections by the scholars and mine that 

were separated by seven years, there is no significant difference. In other words, 

there is not much more to add in terms of defining the status of village elections 

in China. While I outlined the potential impact of village elections on China’s overall political landscape seven years ago, Chinese scholars have refrained from touching on this subject in 2009. Looking back, how do I assess what I said then? 

In the early 2000s, many citizens in Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities demanded 

their full right to vote and to get elected. The demand came in outbursts and was 

termed by many as the election storm but it did not go very far. Neither was it 

warmly received by the government. We may attribute this to a few factors: 

(1) The growing middle class in China seems to enjoy the way of life they 

have achieved through economic reforms. They may be concerned that any new 

changes will either cause a backlash or trigger a challenge to the status quo. 

When Jackie Chan mentioned that the Chinese people need to be ‘‘controlled’’ 

(guanqilai) at the recent Bo’ao Forum, he was warmly applauded by the audience, which was comprised of members of China’s business and political elite. 

(2) Direct elections were increasingly linked by the Chinese power apparatus 

and academic elite to an evil conspiracy orchestrated by the West, headed by 

the United States. These elites charged that elections are not a tool China 

needs to combat corruption and enhance good governance; rather, elections are 

a wedge used by Western nations envious of China’s growth to stop China from 

becoming a strong and harmonious power. 

(3) Without changes in the existing laws and regulations, any attempt to elevate direct elections to other levels of government can easily be deemed illegal 

or unconstitutional. 

The real impact of village elections lies in the area of wide application of their 

procedures either directly or indirectly at high levels of the government. It should 

be emphasized that village election procedures are usually not adopted wholesale 

because doing so would violate existing laws. Rather, it is the idea of a more open 

nomination process, a more competitive way of selecting preliminary candidates, 

and a more transparent means of choosing the right person among multiple candidates that has been used at the township, county and even higher levels of the 

government and the Party. 

These new and innovative experiments in selecting government and Party officials 

are bold and popular but there are also inherent problems. First, they are isolated 

and there have been no efforts to turn such successful pilots into a policy that would 

be widely adopted. Second, they are designed to expand choice, but all the new procedures adopted have to fall within the constraints of existing laws. As a result, the 

procedures are complex, elaborate and even cumbersome, making it very difficult 

and costly to implement. Lastly, many officials have to take political risks to introduce these measures and the fear of offending higher level officials runs deep. 

When it comes to the final scenario of China becoming a democracy, vibrant 

village elections are still seen as a first step. This was the vision of Peng Zhen, 

chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC under whose watch the Organic 

Law of the Villager Committees was adopted on a provisional basis in 1987. This 

is the vision of Wen Jiabao, who has repeatedly told foreign visitors that grassroots 

elections in China will eventually move up to the higher echelons of the government. 

This was also the hope of many people both inside and outside China. Many felt 

the hope had become reality when Suining City officials organized the direct election 

of the magistrate in Buyun Township on the last day of 1998. The hope was somewhat dashed when Buyun did not become China’s political Xiaogang and the fear 

of a Color Revolution sweeping through China since 2005 has swept away what 

seemed to be the logical next step for a planned democracy to eventually take shape 

in China. 

THE DECLINING RELEVANCE OF CHINA’S VILLAGE ELECTIONS

At the May 2002 roundtable, I said that village committee elections became so 

popular that they caused negative reactions from groups who saw these elections 

39 

as a threat to the status quo. ‘‘There is a systematic and almost conspiratorial effort 

to label village elections as a source of evil that is 

(1) undermining the Party’s leadership in rural areas, affecting rural stability, 

(2) turning the rural economy upside down, and 

(3) helping clan and other old forms of power to control and grow in the countryside.’’ 

These charges against village elections have only increased in intensity and scale 

in recent years with more reports of cases of violence associated with elections, vote 

buying and four types of people seizing control of village elections. The four types 

of people are ‘‘the rich,’’ ‘‘the strong,’’ ‘‘the evil’’ and ‘‘the patriarch (clan leader)’’ 

respectively. Many scholars argue that village elections are very violent and very 

corrupt, indicating that as a trial of adopting Western-style democracy, they are a 

complete fiasco and are not suitable to the Chinese situation at all. 

These accusations are irrational and despicable attacks on the capability and 

readiness of the Chinese farmers who are keen in participating in these elections. 

They are indicative of a strong political elite within the Party/state apparatus and 

their academic supporters that are bent on preventing the introduction of meaningful political reform through defining direct elections as something totally alien to 

Chinese culture, severely damaging to all developing countries, and utterly impossible to implement in a country with such a large and unruly population. 

Regardless of how misleading these criticisms are, village elections are indeed becoming less relevant to the lives of Chinese farmers. There are several underlying 

causes. First, the young, educated and informed farmers are working in the cities. 

They are unable to run for village committee seats and to personally participate in 

these elections. Second, with the abolition of rural taxes and fees in recent years, 

a highly charged election has disappeared. The authority of the village committee 

is also being eroded as a result. Its relationship with the township government has 

become less substantial. Third, the Chinese government has opened the door for 

land reform, allowing farmers to enter into joint ventures, using their land rights 

as shares. It seems a new kind of election is emerging in areas that are moving fast 

on land reform, namely the election of board members of the joint venture. Fourth, 

there is a shift at the top level of the Chinese government from institutionalizing 

village self-government to finding ways to increase farmers’ income. This shift is 

even more urgent when the economy enters into a downturn and when farmers’ lack 

of access to education, healthcare and unemployment benefits not only decreases domestic consumption but creates fertile soil for social unrest and mass incidents. 

There is a consensus at the top not to introduce direct elections at higher levels 

of the government. A large number of scholars have declared that direct elections 

are a unique Western intellectual idea that cannot be transferred to China. The 

Party is not even yielding its personnel selection power at the village level to direct 

election methods. Efforts at directly selecting township magistrates have been strictly forbidden since 2001. Within this political context, village elections will continue 

in years to come. Last year, 18 provinces held direct village elections, involving 400 

million rural voters. However, these elections are limited to villages alone. Their impact on rural governance is limited. They will not and cannot be a driving force for 

China’s political reform. 

WILL THERE BE ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS?

Chinese leaders have openly declared that a multi-party system is not good, that 

a system of checks and balances are contrary to the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party, and that Western style democracy does not fit China’s unique circumstances. Chinese scholars are divided. Those on the left either say China has 

already enshrined a unique system of democracy that was able to deliver a brilliant 

response to a disastrous earthquake and host an unprecedentedly successful Olympic Games or that the blind faith in using elections to combat corruption and 

improve governance is a dangerous superstition. Scholars leaning toward the right 

are likely to argue that it is counterproductive to denounce Western-style democracy. The focus should be on making China’s democracy a working and executable 

model. Many suggest that political reform won’t take place unless there is judicial 

independence, transparency and measurable governance in China. Others advocate 

freedom of the press and freedom of speech as the prerequisite for eventual democratization. These scholars tend to neglect the importance of elections. 

A small group of scholars, notably Cai Dingjian of the China University of Political Science and Law and Jia Xijin of Tsinghua University, believe that choice and 

accountability are not possible without free and fair elections. Jia Xijin recently 

wrote that China does not have to introduce direct elections of government leaders 

but should cut the number of people’s deputies at all levels and make their elections 

40 

direct and competitive. According to her recommendation, China’s National People’s 

Congress (NPC) should reduce its number of ‘‘Congressmen’’ and ‘‘Congresswomen’’ 

from the current 2,987 to about 750, with a minimum of two coming from each of 

China’s 334 cities. Election of NPC deputies must be direct. Elected NPC deputies 

must be professional and paid representatives with staff support. They will subsequently take their job seriously and do a good job in electing state leaders, supreme 

court justices and top law enforcers, approving budgets, supervising expenditures 

and endorsing national level policies. 

Jia Xijin’s proposal is bold and feasible but it is probably just a vision at this 

time. To get the Party to give up airtight control at the national level immediately 

with no conditions is unthinkable if you look at how difficult it is for the Party to 

give popularly elected village committees total control over their own affairs. For a 

political entity that has always held power, to be held accountable by another entity 

popularly elected requires a learning process. The Party has to learn how to subject 

itself to the wishes and whims of the people’s representatives. It is not going to be 

an easy adjustment. Furthermore, it will take time for the Party-state leaders, 

scholars and China’s middle class to believe that having people’s representatives as 

masters of the Party will not lead to chaos and instability. This process can proceed 

without changing any laws and creating new institutions. This requires the process 

of making direct elections of people’s representatives at the township/town and 

county/district levels as competitive and transparent as village elections. 

Every five years, all eligible voters in China, possibly numbering 900 million, are 

supposed to directly elect representatives for people’s congresses at the town/township and county/district levels. These elected people’s representatives will then elect 

government leaders, approve budgets and endorse policy at their respective levels 

and also elect people’s representatives to higher levels. Unless these elections are 

free of manipulation and these elected deputies have real power, capable people will 

not run for these positions and voters are not going to be interested in voting in 

these elections. 

It takes vision, courage and time to make these elections meaningful. Making 

these elections open does not mean introducing Western style democracy. These are 

elections in which the Communist Party can field its candidates without blocking 

other organizations from society at large from having their candidates compete. 

Those elected will elect government leaders. They are not members of the mob; they 

are well informed, well-placed and well-connected. In order to ensure that the Party 

cannot interfere with these elections and that those who choose to interfere will be 

punished, existing laws need to be amended, new laws drafted and new institutions 

created. 

If China’s leaders are unwilling or cannot incorporate the procedures of village 

elections to direct elections of local people’s representatives and accept this gradual 

and indirect electoral democracy, we will have to consider that China might be able 

to defy universally recognized developmental models and create a new political system that will sustain economic growth, check government abuse, reduce corruption 

and inefficiency, protect people’s pursuit of happiness, and create a harmonious 

state that loves all, hates none and poses no threat to the outside world. his would 

be a daring new system, and an emerging substitute to the Washington Consensus. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRUCE J. DICKSON

MAY 22, 2009

WHO CONSENTS TO THE ‘‘BEIJING CONSENSUS? ’’ 

CRONY COMMUNISM IN CHINA

After three decades of economic reform in China, many observers expect that political change will be the inevitable consequence of ongoing economic development. 

However, China’s current combination of a vibrant economy and Leninist political 

institutions runs contrary to the ‘‘Washington consensus,’’ which asserts that state 

intervention is not conducive to economic development, and that economic freedoms 

require political liberties associated with democracy to flourish. This neo-liberal 

model has been the cornerstone of international aid and lending programs for the 

past two decades. However, China offers an alternative arrangement that may be 

appealing to a variety of developing countries. The ‘‘Beijing consensus’’ suggests that 

rapid economic development requires active leadership by political elites committed 

to growth and that authoritarian rule is necessary to sustain these pro-growth policies and limit demands for greater equity and social welfare. The ‘‘Beijing consensus’’ therefore is antithetical to the ‘‘Washington consensus’’ and has so far deVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
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1 Recent scholarship on the adaptability of the CCP includes Andrew Nathan, ‘‘Authoritarian 

Resilience,’’ Journal of Democracy, vol. 14, no. 1 (January 2003), pp. 6–17; Kjeld Erik 

Brodsgaard and Zheng Yongnian, eds., Bringing the Party Back In: How China Is Governed 

(Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004); Cheng Li, ‘‘The New Bipartisanship within the 

Chinese Communist Party,’’ Orbis, vol. 49, no. 3 (summer 2005), pp. 387–400; and David 

Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (Berkeley and Washington, DC: 

University of California Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008). 2The discussion that follows is based on the more detailed analysis in Wealth into Power: The 

Communist Party’s Embrace of China’s Private Sector (New York: Cambridge University Press, 

2008). Related coverage of these issues can be found in Kellee Tsai, Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), and 

Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (New 

York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 3This new policy was announced in the communique ́ of Fifth Plenum of the 15th Central 

Committee of the CCP; see Xinhua, October 11, 2000. 4Guowuyuan, ‘‘Guanyu dali jiaqiang chengxiang geti gongshanghu he siying qiye 

shuishouzhengguan gongzuo de jueding,’’ Guowuyuan Gongbao no. 16 (September 20,1989), pp. 

626–629; quoted in Susan H. Whiting, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy 

of Institutional Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 137. 

fied the logic that economic development inevitably leads to political change. Rather 

than conform to neo-liberal orthodoxy or predictions of regime change, China’s leaders are committed to promoting economic growth by integrating wealth and power. 

The expectation that economic reform in general and privatization in particular 

is leading to democratization in China is based on two assumptions. First, the CCP 

is a passive actor, unaware of the social changes that are accompanying economic 

modernization and unable to adapt itself to these new circumstances. Second, China’s capitalists are inherently pro-democratic. Both of these assumptions are faulty, 

and the predictions based on them equally shaky. 

Rather than a passive actor, the CCP has been the primary agent of economic and 

social change, and has been to be far more adaptable than most observers have anticipated.1 In the course of promoting its policies of economic reform and opening 

(gaige kaifang), it has actively embraced the private sector in a variety of ways.2

Throughout the reform period, its support for the private sector has grown significantly. Rhetorically, it has pledged to ‘‘support, encourage and guide’’ the private 

sector.3 This pledge—with increasingly strong language—has been a part of the Chinese constitution since 1988. In addition, it amended the state constitution in 2004 

to protect private property, and enacted a property rights law in 2007 to codify this 

commitment. Ideologically, the CCP has evolved from seeing private entrepreneurs 

as a potential threat to its existence to embracing them as a key source of support. 

In 1989, soon after the violent end of popular demonstrations in Tiananmen Square 

and throughout the country, the CCP banned the recruitment of capitalists into the 

CCP, viewing them as using ‘‘illegal methods to seek huge profits and thereby create 

great social disparity and contribute to discontent among the public.’’ 4 But during 

the 1990s and to the present, the CCP came to see the private sector as the main 

source of new economic growth, job creation, and tax revenue. Rather than viewing 

private entrepreneurs as class enemies, the CCP embraced them as partners. In 

Jiang Zemin’s theory of the ‘‘Three Represents,’’ entrepreneurs were elevated to the 

first of the groups the CCP claimed to represent. With this justification, the CCP 

has not only encouraged its members to go into the private sector, it has co-opted 

private entrepreneurs into the party. Institutionally, the CCP has created a variety 

of links with the private sector, including a dense variety of business associations 

(some affiliated with the CCP, others organized by capitalists themselves). These 

allow the CCP to monitor the private sector, and also allow entrepreneurs to interact with and even lobby the government. A second type of institutional link is the 

network of party organizations that have been created in private firms. This is one 

of the CCP’s traditional means of linking itself to society, and has been an increasingly common occurrence in the private sector over the past decade. 

One of the more remarkable aspects of China’s privatization has been that the 

rapid expansion of the private sector and the accompanying political support for it 

has come without discernible pressure from the capitalists themselves. The CCP has 

initiated economic reforms that have benefited the private sector, but did so as a 

means of boosting economic development and standards of living in general, not to 

satisfy the specific interests of China’s capitalists. 

Expectations that privatization will lead to democratization are also based on the 

assumption that China’s capitalists naturally hold pro-democratic beliefs and would 

prefer a more democratic polity than the current regime. This assumption is derived 

by the European experience, where urban capitalists were the primary agents of 

democratic change. In Barrington Moore’s famous hypothesis, ‘‘no bourgeois, no democracy’’: where the urban bourgeoisie in Europe sought political rights and repVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
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5 Barrington Moore, Social Origins Of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the 

Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). 6Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995; 

Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed., The Developmental State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); 

Eva Bellin, ‘‘Contingent Democrats: Industrialists, Labor, and Democratization in Late-Developing Countries,’’ World Politics, vol. 52, no. 2 (January 2000), pp. 175–205. 

resentative institutions in order to protest their economic interests, democracy 

gradually emerged; but in the absence of a dominant class of urban property owners, the consequence was authoritarian regimes, either fascist or communist.5 This 

observation influenced subsequent thinking: capitalists would tend to seek democratic institutions to protect their economic interests. But in late developing countries, there has been far more cooperation between the state and big business than 

was the case in the early developers in Europe.6 Capitalists do not always need to 

demand democracy to defend their interests; instead, they develop cooperative relations with the state in order to achieve the same goal. This cooperation is in part 

based on shared interests of promoting economic development. But it is also based 

in part on shared identities: political and economic elites often have family ties and 

come from similar social and professional backgrounds. 

In China as in other developing countries, the state and business are closely intertwined. Their shared identities and common interests create support for the political 

status quo. China’s entrepreneurs have been the main beneficiaries of the CCP’s 

economic reform policies and have little incentive to prefer democracy as an alternative regime. Political change would introduce political uncertainty that could easily be detrimental to their economic interests. They could lose their preferential access to officials and consequently find that the current pro-growth policies would be 

replaced by more populist policies that benefit society at large but negatively impact 

the capitalists’ potential for growth and profits. Rather than be locked in a 

confrontational relationship with the state that requires democratic institutions to 

resolve, China’s capitalists and party and government officials have developed a stable set of relationships that I refer to as ‘‘crony communism.’’ Like the more familiar 

and more common ‘‘crony capitalism,’’ crony communism in China is based on the 

cozy and often corrupt relationship that exists between business and the state. But 

the way this cozy relationship has developed and evolved is distinctive in China. In 

the sections below, I will elaborate on the nature of crony communism in China, explain its dynamics, and assess its implications. 

CCP DOMINATED

The first and most basic element of crony communism is that it is dominated by 

the CCP. In a political system in which the CCP enjoys a monopoly on political organization, this comes as little surprise. But just as the CCP is the central actor 

in most aspects of politics in China, it is also the center of crony communism. 

First of all, as noted above, the CCP initiated economic reforms on its own initiative and without pressure from capitalists. Indeed, at the beginning of the post-Mao 

reform era, capitalists were for all intents and purposes non-existent in China. The 

CCP’s economic reforms provided a space for the private sector to grow, and over 

time it became increasingly important, providing most of the new economic growth, 

jobs, and tax revenue. But most key elements of economic reform—such as the twotrack pricing system, the gradual abandonment of central planning, and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises—were initiated by the CCP to produce growth and 

dynamism into the economy. They were not the consequence of pressure from nonstate interest groups. 

The main beneficiaries of economic reform have also been CCP members, both 

local officials and ‘‘red capitalists,’’ private entrepreneurs who are also CCP members. Many red capitalists were already in the CCP before going into business (a 

group I refer to as xiahai capitalists, following the Chinese expression for joining 

the private sector). They responded to Deng Xiaoping’s call to ‘‘take the lead in getting rich,’’ a slogan that implicitly recognized that some individuals and some regions of the country would prosper before the rest. The people who were best positioned to get rich first were those who were well connected to the state, either as 

local officials, SOE managers, or rank and file party members. They used those connections to open their businesses, obtain capital and foreign investment, and gain 

access to domestic and foreign markets. In this sense, they were able to turn their 

political power into personal wealth. Other entrepreneurs were co-opted into the 

part, turning their wealth into power. Regardless of whether they were in the party 

before going into business or were co-opted afterward, red capitalists have distinct 

43 

7 Reported in Hong Kong’s Singdao Daily on October 19, 2006, available at http:// 

financenews.sina.com/ausdaily/000-000-107-105/202/2006-10-19/1509124173.shtml . 8Paul D. Hutchcroft, ‘‘Oligarchs and Cronies in the Philippine State: The Politics of Patrimonial Plunder,’’ World Politics, vol. 43, no. 3 (April 1991), pp. 414–50; David C. Kang, Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 2002); Richard Robison and Vedi Hediz, Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The 

Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets (London: Routledgecurzon, 2004). 9Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, ‘‘Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China,’’ Comparative Politics, vol. 31, no. 2 (January 1999), pp. 167–186. 10 X.L. Ding, ‘‘The Illicit Asset Stripping of Chinese State Firms,’’ China Journal, no. 43 (January 2000); Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University 

Press, 2004); Melanie Manion, Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland 

China and Hong Kong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). 

advantages in business: they tend to operate the largest and most profitable firms 

(see table 1). Most private entrepreneurs acknowledge that red capitalists have advantages in business, although as the CCP’s commitment to the private sector as 

a whole has grown over time, those advantages may have become less pronounced 

(see table 2). The protection of private property, development of the legal system, 

especially concerning business law, and the greater integration of China into the 

global economy has made capitalists less dependent on the state. Never the less, the 

smaller scale of firms owned by non-CCP members suggests there remain limits on 

the expansion and operation of those who are not communist cronies. 

Not only do CCP members benefit tremendously from the privatization of the 

economy, so do their sons and daughters. Whereas the children of first and second 

generation leaders often followed their fathers into the party, government, and military, children of third and fourth generation leaders have all gone into business (or 

in the cases of the daughters of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, married prominent businessmen). An internal report (allegedly from the Central Party School) indicated 

that 90% of China’s ultra-wealthy (those with personal fortunes worth over 100 million yuan) are the children of high ranking officials.7 This is an extreme example, 

but in a larger sense the concentration of wealth in the hands of the people who 

are politically well-connected is the essence of crony communism. At the same time, 

public knowledge that the primary beneficiaries of China’s rapid economic growth 

are political insiders threatens to delegitimize the ongoing economic reforms. Not 

only has rapid growth created growing inequality, but economic wealth and political 

power are controlled by the same groups of privileged elites. 

DECENTRALIZED

A second characteristic of crony communism in China is that it is decentralized. 

Much of the collusion between party and government officials and capitalists occurs 

at the local level. Unlike the practice of crony capitalism in Southeast Asia, crony 

communism in China is not dominated by a ruling family or central leaders.8 Instead, it involves officials at all levels of the political hierarchy. 

The close ties between state and the private sector in China is in part driven by 

the imperative of producing economic growth. Growth rates are one of the ‘‘hard targets’’ that local officials have to meet in order to be promoted.9 This gives them an 

incentive to cooperate with the private sector, which is the primary source of economic growth. Local officials control approvals of most projects, whether selling off 

state and collectively owned enterprises or transferring land use rights to developers. This control has given rise to a variety of corrupt transactions. Many firms 

have been privatized in sweetheart deals in which the local officials sell the firms 

and their assets at a fraction of their true value, instantly enriching the cronies who 

buy the firms and the officials who receive bribes and kickbacks for their part in 

the transaction.10 In other cases, capitalists provide favors for the family members 

of local officials as a tacit part of their bargain. They may provide jobs to the children and spouses of officials, pay tuition for private school or even foreign education, 

and even buy cars or houses for them. Local officials may also have business dealings of their own, either directly owning or operating firms or indirectly involvement 

in firms owned by family and friends. The incentive for local officials to support the 

private sector is therefore not just due to a desire for professional advancement, it 

is also based on immediate material gain. 

The benefits of crony communism are enjoyed by officials at all levels of the political hierarchy. Most of the allegations of corruption involve officials at the county 

level and below. With the exception of a few high profile corruption cases (such as 

Chen Liangyu and Beijing vice mayor Liu Zhihua), the CCP has mostly targeted 

lower level officials for punishment. Although most observers believe that this improperly discounts the corrupt behavior of provincial and central level officials, it 

also acknowledges that officials at all levels are profiting from China’s economic deVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
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11 Joel S. Hellman, ‘‘Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,’’ World Politics, vol. 50, no. 2 (January 1998), pp. 203–234; David E. Hoffman, The 

Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). 12Scott Kennedy, The Business of Lobbying In China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 

2005). 13David L. Wank, Commodifying Communism: Business, Trust, and Politics in a Chinese City 

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 14 Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson, ‘‘Allies of the State: Democratic Support and Regime Support among China’s Private Entrepreneurs,’’ China Quarterly (December 2008). 15For the debate over the propriety of including capitalists into the CCP, see Bruce J. 

Dickson, Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political 

Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 98–107. 

velopment. Put differently, the benefits of crony communism are quite decentralized. 

The authority to approve projects is not controlled by a handful of top leaders. As 

a result, officials at all levels have both the incentive and the means to cooperate 

with the private sector with both legitimate and corrupt interactions. 

DIFFUSE

A different aspect of crony communism is based on the structure of China’s political economy. Unlike in post-communist Russia, where wealth was concentrated in 

the hands of a few politically well-connected individual who became known as 

‘‘oligarchs,’’ 11 China’s privatization has not resulted in a similar concentration of 

wealth. Instead, China’s private sector is characterized by a predominance of small 

and medium scale enterprises. On the one hand, this means that the beneficiaries 

of economic reform in general and privatization in particular have been widespread. 

On the other hand, it also means that collective action among capitalists is difficult 

because their numbers are so large. Firms do engage in extensive lobbying, but primarily over business-related issues, such as setting industrial standards, but not 

over broader public policy issues.12

On a larger scale, there has been no collective action among private business to 

promote political change. In 1989, a few prominent capitalists (in particular Wan 

Runnan of Beijing’s Stone Group) and many getihu (individual owners of very small 

scale enterprises) offered material support to protestors in Tiananmen Square, but 

they were the exception not the rule. Most private entrepreneurs were opposed to 

the goals of the demonstrators, fearing they would disrupt political stability.13 After 

1989, many of the students who participated in the protest movement maintained 

their political ideals but chose to pursue them more quietly and indirectly, for example, by providing financial support for academic conferences, research centers, and 

publications regarding political reform, rule of law, and constitutional government. 

But again, these pro-democratic capitalists have been in the minority: in a recent 

survey of private entrepreneurs, only 25 percent engaged in these kinds of activities.14 The main trend has been for China’s capitalists to either support the status 

quo or remain apolitical. In the absence of more effective organizations, China’s capitalists have difficulty engaging in collective action outside the scope of their business activities. The diffuse nature of China’s political economy, in particular the 

large number of small and medium scale enterprises, makes collective action additionally difficult, consequently adding more stability to the crony communist system. 

EXPANSIVE

Crony communism is also expansive: the number of red capitalists has continued 

to grow. In 1993, only about 13 percent of private entrepreneurs were party members; by 2007, that figure almost tripled, to 38 percent (see figure 1). This increase 

occurred for two separate reasons. First, most of the increase in the number of red 

capitalists has been the result of party members who went into the private sector 

and the privatization of SOEs. These types of entrepreneurs were already well integrated into the state before going into private business. According to my surveys of 

relatively large scale firms, red capitalists who were already in the CCP before joining the private sector (i.e., xiahai entrepreneurs) have become the largest group of 

private entrepreneurs (see table 3). 

The second source of growth among red capitalists has come through co-optation. 

Although the recruitment of private entrepreneurs into the CCP was banned after 

the 1989 demonstrations, Jiang Zemin’s ‘‘Three Represents’’ speech in 2001 legitimized the practice.15 Initially, the lifting of the ban was expected to lead to surge 

of new red capitalists, but that did not happen. In part, this outcome was due to 

the reluctance of local officials to enthusiastically implement the new policy, showing that many in the party continue to resist the inclusion of capitalists into the 

communist political system; in part also, the lackluster response was due to the capVerDate Nov 24 2008 17:42 Oct 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 U:\DOCS\51188.TXT DEIDRE
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16For an alternative argument, namely that capitalists are motivated to become members of 

local people’s congresses and political consultative conferences in order to strengthen the rule 

of law and protect that property rights, see Hongbin Li, Lingsheng Meng, and Junsen Zhang, 

‘‘Why Do Entrepreneurs Enter Politics? Evidence from China,’’ Economic Inquiry, vol. 44, no. 

3 (July 2006), pp. 559–578. 

italists themselves. Many felt that the CCP’s support for the private sector had become so pronounced that they could benefit from that support without having to 

incur the costs of time and inconvenience that party membership entails. Never the 

less, the number of co-opted red capitalists grew steadily, if slowly, in the years 

after Jiang’s ‘‘Three Represents’’ speech. 

In co-opting capitalists, the CCP uses a ‘‘grasp the large, release the small’’ strategy similar to its approach to reforming SOEs: in terms of recruiting private entrepreneurs, the CCP focuses on the largest firms. Co-opted red capitalists on average 

operate larger firms than non-party members, but not as large as xiahai capitalists. 

Similarly, large firms are more likely to be focus of building new party organizations 

and recruiting new members from among workers. In integrating capitalists into the 

political system, the CCP clearly prefers economic elites over small scale operators. 

Why do China’s capitalists want to join the CCP? In business as in other careers, 

there is a glass ceiling for those who are not in party. This gives economically and 

politically ambitious entrepreneurs an incentive to join. According to local officials, 

the main reason capitalists seek to join the CCP is that they have political aspirations. The CCP directly controls nominations for local people’s congresses and appointments to local people’s political consultative conferences, and indirectly it also 

controls candidacy in village elections. In other words, access to China’s political institutions is supply driven, not demand driven.16 One indicator of this is the breakdown of capitalists in these local institutions. Over time, a greater percentage of 

people’s congress members and village candidates have become xiahai red capitalists, whereas the percentage of co-opted and non-red capitalists dropped (see table 

4). There are two reasons for this change in distribution. First, the CCP has developed a more systematic strategy for nominations (especially for people’s congress 

elections), and favors the most politically reliable capitalists for these political posts. 

Second, the benefits of holding village office are quickly maximized and capitalists 

express less interest in being reelected. Capitalists other than xiahai red capitalists 

may have decided that official village duties are detrimental to business operations, 

or that other types of political activities are more useful. In both these ways, the 

CCP’s strategy has been to provide political access to those within the crony communist system and to prevent non-cronies from using these official institutions to 

pursue a political agenda. 

Still, a good number of capitalists are not party members and do not want to join 

the CCP. Many claim that party membership does not matter, that with the CCP’s 

support for the private sector, the benefits of its reform and opening policies are 

available to all capitalists. In other cases, they claim that they are not qualified for 

party membership, and they are generally correct: most are over 35 and have less 

than a high school education, two key criteria for new recruits. For others, the lack 

of interest in party membership is due to political alienation: those who see the CCP 

as corrupt, monolithic, and unwilling to grant enough freedom to its members express no interest in joining it. 

In contrast, local officials provide different reasons for why many capitalists do 

not want to join the CCP. First of all, they want to avoid the CCP’s scrutiny of their 

business practices. According to local officials, red capitalists are more law abiding 

and more honest in paying their taxes. Put differently, they may be under more 

pressure from the CCP to fulfill their obligations, whereas non-CCP capitalists are 

less likely to be monitored or caught. In addition, red capitalists are also under 

more pressure to contribute to charity. Capitalists who do not belong to the CCP, 

who do not belong to the official business associations (such as the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and the Private Enterprise Association), and who 

do not have party organizations in their firms are less likely to make charitable contributions. Charity work is seen as a key part of party building and the work of 

business associations, and they definitely target their own members. 

In short, party membership is seen by some as detrimental because it imposes 

new demands on their busy schedules and on their conduct, and by others as a stepping stone to other forms of political participation but not something desirable for 

its own sake. Crony communism may be an expansive system, but it does not appeal 

to all capitalists. 

46 

17South China Morning Post, April 26, 2006. 18 Bruce J. Dickson, ‘‘Beijing’s Ambivalent Reformers,’’ Current History, vol. 103, no. 674 (September 2004), pp. 249–255. 

PATERNALISTIC

A related aspect of crony communism is that it is paternalistic. Local officials see 

party building as not only essential for the party’s relationship with the private sector, but also necessary to improve the management abilities and business acumen 

of private firms. The CCP has given more attention to basic party building in recent 

years, not just in the recruitment of capitalists into the party but also in creating 

party organizations in private firms and recruiting workers who are employed there 

(see table 5). Party organizations in private enterprises do not simply lead political 

study among party members who work there, more importantly they focus on business issues, such as enhancing quality control and imbuing corporate culture. Officials generally have a low regard for the business acumen of most entrepreneurs 

in their communities, and see it as their responsibility to make them more efficient 

and competitive. This viewpoint may be self-serving, but it is not altogether off the 

mark. The private sector in China is relatively new, and most entrepreneurs did not 

grow up in the family business or have other relevant experience before going into 

business. Additional training and attention to basic issues of business management 

would presumably benefit many of them. 

Another aspect of the CCP’s paternalism is the opening of party schools to private 

entrepreneurs. The Central Party School began offering classes for private entrepreneurs in April 2000, and by 2006 over 10,000 entrepreneurs from around the 

country had attended.17 Local party schools also began holding similar kinds of 

classes. While these party school classes included some degree of political education, 

for the most part they are similar to programs offered by business schools and concentrate on marketing, human resources, accounting, and other practical management issues. In addition, attending the party school allows entrepreneurs to build 

connections other officials; this is also a central appeal to the officials who attend 

other classes at party schools. 

SYMBIOTIC

The purpose of CCP’s party building activities are not just to monitor and control 

private sector, thereby preventing a political challenge, equally importantly they are 

designed to facilitate cooperation between CCP and private sector on their shared 

goal of promoting economic growth. As a result, another aspect of crony communism 

is that it is symbiotic. The cozy relationship between the party and the private sector is mutually beneficial. Both benefit from promoting economic development and 

privatization. For that reason, private entrepreneurs share similar values with 

party and government officials on a variety of policy issues. For example, not only 

are most entrepreneurs and officials satisfied with the pace of economic reform, they 

have become increasingly satisfied over the years, with nearly 70 percent of both 

groups believing the pace of reform is ‘‘about right’’ (see table 6). 

A more telling example of shared viewpoints concerns the tradeoff between the 

goals of economic growth and political stability. Promoting growth has been the top 

priority of the post-Mao period, but has come at the expense of political stability. 

The number of local protests increased from 32,000 in 1999 to 87,000 in 2005. Many 

of these protests were the unintended consequences of rapid growth: farmers whose 

fields were taken away in illegal and corrupt land seizures, workers who were not 

paid or forced to work in unsafe conditions, laid off and retired workers who did 

not get the cash payments and insurance protection they were promised, urban residents who were forced to move to make room for new development, and so on. This 

threat to stability led China’s leaders to more pro-actively address the causes of popular dissatisfaction, as well as to respond quickly when protests did break out.18

This concern for political order is also reflected in the views of entrepreneurs and 

officials. With the exception of county-level cadres, most entrepreneurs and local officials put more emphasis on preserving order than on promoting growth. Even 

among county-level officials, there was a sharp drop over time in the percent who 

favored growth, although still a majority (see table 7). This shared viewpoint is 

based on different but complementary interests. For entrepreneurs, political unrest 

threatens the stability that is most beneficial to their operations. For township and 

village officials, the main responsibility for maintaining order is theirs. For county 

officials, economic growth is their main priority, but their commitment to growth 

has more recently been tempered by the rise of popular protests. 

47 

19 Bellin, ‘‘Contingent Democrats.’’ 20Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China. 21Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 

SELF-PERPETUATING

These characteristics of crony communism in China make it self-perpetuating. As 

the central actor in the political system, the CCP has a clear incentive in maintaining its political monopoly and protecting its cronies. Local officials enjoy a large 

share of the benefits from the cozy relationship between the state and business, and 

should be expected to maintain it. The expansive nature of crony communism gives 

the opportunity for others to be included, and lowers the incentive for them to challenge it. The structure of China’s political economy, with its predominance of small 

and medium scale enterprises, also reduces the likelihood of collective action: the 

large number of small actors inhibits effective collective action. Above all, the 

shared interests of the key actors—the private entrepreneurs and party and government officials—also create a strong incentive to maintain a relationship that has 

proven to be so mutually beneficial. 

POTENTIAL FOR CHANGE

Although I have argued that crony communism is likely to remain self-perpetuating, what would cause this to change? First of all, because the capitalists’ support for the status quo is largely based on material interests, a decline in the probusiness policies of the CCP would prompt a reconsideration of the capitalists’ relationship with the state. This does not seem likely under current circumstances (especially the international economic crisis that began in 2008), but new leaders or 

dramatic change in the political environment within China could lead to a change 

of policy that would be detrimental to business interests. 

Second, an increase in the populist policies of the current leaders might also undermine crony communism. The central leaders under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao 

have moderated the pro-growth strategy pursued under Jiang Zemin. They have 

tried to foster a more balanced pattern of growth so that inland and western provinces do not feel left out of China’s modernization. They have attempted to reduce 

regional inequalities with income subsidies and the elimination of rural taxes. They 

have adopted labor laws and environmental policies to ameliorate some of the 

externalities of rapid growth. While adopting these populist measures, they have 

also maintained the imperative of rapid growth and reliance on the private sector. 

If the current balance between the elitist strategy of development designed to sustain rapid growth and the populist policies designed to improve equity were to tip 

in the favor of populism, and therefore the incentives for growth were curtailed, the 

capitalists would be less likely to lend their unqualified support. 

Third, the more a true market economy emerges, the less dependent capitalists 

will be on the state for their success; accordingly, the less likely they would be to 

support the status quo.19 Even now, this process is slowly underway. Private firms 

are more able to get loans from state banks, even though this is still highly restricted. Stronger legal protection for property rights makes political protection less 

salient, and while property rights are still weakly and unevenly enforced, the trend 

has been toward more rather than less protection. The state still tightly controls the 

ability of Chinese firms to list on domestic and foreign stock exchanges, although 

this control has loosened of late. As firms become more responsible for their own 

profitability, and less dependent on favors from the state, the less incentive they 

will have to nurture the cozy ties with party and government officials that are now 

required for firms to be successful. 

Fourth, and conversely, a dramatic increase in corruption could also temper the 

political support of China’s capitalists. Much of the rampant corruption in the reform era has been fueled by the business activities of private entrepreneurs, many 

of whom reportedly set aside a certain portion of a project’s cost for bribes and 

gifts.20 So long as corruption remains limit and accepted as a routine cost of doing 

business, crony communism is likely to endure. But if the demands of officials become predatory, the political support among capitalists is likely to diminish. Indeed, 

the experience of other countries suggests that growing dissatisfaction with corrupt 

officials can cause capitalists to shift their political support away from the incumbent regime.21 Such a development is not inconceivable in China. 

Finally, crony communism could become the victim of its own success. There are 

a variety of consequences of privatization that could trigger more intense public resentment. The relationship between the state and business is inherently corrupt, 

and while this level of corruption is seemingly acceptable to most capitalists, it is 

48 

a cause of tremendous dissatisfaction among the public at large. The rapid growth 

of China’s economy has also been accompanied by growing inequality. To the extent 

that the public comes to perceive that China’s nouveau riche have attained their 

prosperity through political ties and not through entrepreneurship and hard work, 

they will become less willing to accept the unequal distribution of wealth. The growing number of protests against corruption, land grabs, and other aspects of economic 

development has to date remained very localized and specific, but the potential for 

more systemic challenges is not out of the question. This would signal the decay of 

public support for the propriety of the ongoing policies of economic reform and openness, posing an exogenous threat to crony communism. 

CONCLUSION

The CCP has defied predictions that economic reform will lead ultimately to political change. Its economic reforms have unfolded without overt pressure from the 

people who have benefited the most: the private entrepreneurs. The strong progrowth and pro-business policies pursued by the CCP over the past three decades 

of reform have led to the integration of wealth and power in a manner best described as crony communism. This is a key part of the success of the so-called ‘‘Beijing consensus’’—not just that the state is committed to growth, but that it has willing partners in the private sector. Rather than be a threat to the CCP, private entrepreneurs have become a key source of political support. Moreover, by providing 

the jobs, growth and tax revenue that the state needs, they are also indirectly a 

source of the CCP’s popular support and legitimacy. Although the CCP no longer 

pursues the Marxist goals of a communist utopia and the withering away of the 

state, it still is a distinctly Leninist party, aggressively enforcing its monopoly on 

political organization and selectively incorporating new elites into it. Despite the 

anomaly of capitalists in a communist party, the growing integration of economic 

and political elites will continue. 


dikson1.eps
49 

TABLE 1—SIZE OF FIRMS OWNED BY CCP MEMBERS AND NON-CCP 

MEMBERS

1999 2005 

Annual sales (million RMB): 

All entrepreneurs ............................................................................................ 3 .5 12 .5 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ...................................................................................... 5 .3 18 .6 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 3 .4 13 .6 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 3 .1 7 .2 

Do not want to join CCP ................................................................................. 2 .6 8 .5 

Number of workers: 

All entrepreneurs ............................................................................................ 41 .8 74 .4 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ...................................................................................... 75 .4 95 .5 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 38 .6 91 .4 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 27 .5 55 .5 

Do not want to join CCP ................................................................................. 28 .9 54 .5 

Fixed Assets (million RMB): 

All entrepreneurs ............................................................................................ 2 .3 7 .0 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ...................................................................................... 4 .3 10 .3 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 2 .1 6 .7 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 1 .7 4 .5 

Do not want to join CCP ................................................................................. 1 .6 5 .0 

Source: Original survey data. 

TABLE 2—DO CCP MEMBERS HAVE ADVANTAGES IN BUSINESS? 

(Percent Who Agree) 

1999 2005 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ............................................................................................. 37 .3 57 .1 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .......................................................................................... 51 .5 56 .6 

Want to join CCP .................................................................................................... 59 .0 58 .2 

Do not want to join CCP ........................................................................................ 32 .9 26 .7 

Source: Original survey data. 

TABLE 3—PRIVATE ENTREPRENEURS RELATIONSHIP WITH CCP 

(Percentages) 

1999 2005 

Xiahai Red Capitalists 25 .1 34 .1 

Co-opted Red Capitalists ....................................................................................... 13 .1 15 .9 

Want to join CCP .................................................................................................... 28 .2 24 .9 

Don’t Want to Join CCP ........................................................................................ 33 .5 25 .1 

Source: Original survey data. 

50 

TABLE 4—PRIVATE ENTREPRENEURS IN POLITICAL POSTS

(Percentages) 

1999 2005 

Local People’s Congress: 

All Entrepreneurs ........................................................................................... 11 .3 10 .5 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ............................................................................................. 19 .1 18 .0 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 24 .6 15 .5 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 5 .1 3 .0 

Don’t want to join CCP ................................................................................... 5 .6 4 .5 

Village Chief or Representative Council: 

All Entrepreneurs ........................................................................................... 16 .1 13 .7 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ...................................................................................... 22 .8 20 .2 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 40 .6 21 .4 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 10 .7 10 .3 

Don’t want to join CCP ................................................................................... 6 .2 3 .4 

Source: Original survey data. 

TABLE 5—PARTY BUILDING IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, 1999 AND 2005 

Firms with party organizations (percent): 

All Entrepreneurs ........................................................................................... 18 .4 28 .9 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ...................................................................................... 33 .1 46 .3 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 38 .5 44 .1 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 10 .0 15 .7 

Do not want to join CCP ................................................................................. 7 .5 10 .2 

Firms whose workers have joined CCP in recent years (percent): 

All Entrepreneurs ........................................................................................... 24 .7 39 .5 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ...................................................................................... 36 .3 55 .7 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .................................................................................. 37 .5 57 .0 

Want to join CCP ............................................................................................ 20 .7 32 .1 

Do not want to join CCP ................................................................................. 15 .3 14 .4 

Source: Original survey data. 

TABLE 6—SATISFACTION WITH THE PACE OF REFORM IN CHINA

(Percentages) 

Entrepreneurs Cadres 

1999 2005 1999 2005 

Pace of economic reform is: 

Too fast ............................................................................ 9 .7 12 .5 8 .9 9 .4 

About right ...................................................................... 58 .9 70 .3 60 .6 68 .2 

Too slow ........................................................................... 31 .4 17 .2 30 .5 22 .4 

Source: Original survey data. 

TABLE 7—PREFERENCE FOR GROWTH OVER STABILITY AMONG CADRES AND

ENTREPRENEURS

(Percentages for those who prefer growth over stability as top goal) 

1999 2005 

All Entrepreneurs ................................................................................................... 41 .7 44 .6 

Xiahai entrepreneurs ............................................................................................. 39 .1 42 .9 

Co-opted entrepreneurs .......................................................................................... 29 .9 47 .3 

51 

TABLE 7—PREFERENCE FOR GROWTH OVER STABILITY AMONG CADRES AND

ENTREPRENEURS—CONTINUED

(Percentages for those who prefer growth over stability as top goal) 

1999 2005 

Want to join CCP .................................................................................................... 42 .1 42 .1 

Don’t want to join CCP .......................................................................................... 47 .9 47 .5 

All Cadres ............................................................................................................... 60 .6 49 .1 

County cadres ......................................................................................................... 76 .2 59 .3 

Township/village cadres ......................................................................................... 39 .6 41 .6 

Source: Original survey data. 

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