STATEMENT OF LIU YAWEI, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, THE CARTER CENTER'S
CHINA VILLAGE ELECTION PROJECT, ATLANTA, GA
Mr. Liu. Thanks. Thank you for inviting me to speak about
China village elections.
I am going to skip the first part of my statement because
Dr. Thurston has sufficiently covered it. The second issue I am
going to talk about in some detail is the impact of China
village elections, and third, a little bit about the Carter
Center's activities in China.
A general objective assessment of the consequences of the
village community elections in China, what we call the enormous
preliminary exercise of democracy, is as follows: That it has
provided a safety valve to the hundreds of millions of Chinese
peasants who are angry and confused as their life is often
subject to constant exploitation and pressure.
Second, it has introduced legal procedures of elections
into a culture that has never entertained open and free
elections. Third, it has cultivated a new value system, a much-
needed sense of political ownership among Chinese peasants that
do not have any leverage in bargaining with a heavy-handed
government.
However, the popularity of these elections, the loss of
influence and power on the part of officials at the township
and town level, and the fear that these elections will
eventually dislodge the embattled Party apparatus from the
villages has triggered a backlash that is so ferocious, that it
may render these elections into a hollow and meaningless
practice.
The assault seems to have come from two sectors: the
political sector and the academic sector. While the motivation
for the political attacks is easy to comprehend, the charges
are lethal in the Chinese political discourse.
There is, seemingly, a systematic effort to label village
elections as a source of evil forces that are: (1) undermining
the Party's leadership in the rural areas; (2) affecting rural
stability; (3) turning the rural economy upside down; and, (4)
helping clans and other old forms of power and control to grow
in the countryside. These attacks came from the political
sector.
The scholars' criticism might be well-intentioned, but is
equally detrimental. These scholars tend to argue that village
elections are government-imposed, that they have unexpectedly
destroyed traditional rural fabrics of self-government.
What Chinese peasants really need are farmers' alliances
and free disposal of their land. No country has ever seen any
meaningful democracy taking hold from the bottom up.
So, in this context, thousands of Chinese officials,
particularly from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the local
Departments of Civil Affairs, are fighting very hard to keep
this small opening of political reform alive. They are becoming
a little pessimistic, but never, ever hopeless.
As of now, all eyes are trained on the upcoming 16th Party
Congress, whose endorsement of grassroots democracy will be
another clarion call for bolder, and more expensive forms of
popular choice and accountability.
The second issue, is the impact of China's direct village
elections. One could hardly exaggerate the impact of direct
village elections. Yes, these elections are conducted only at
the level of China's self-governing social and political units.
Yes, the right to cast a ballot is only exercised by the
supposedly most stubborn, conservative, and backward group of
the Chinese people. Yes, the very powerful government can still
render the popularly elected leaders powerless. However, it is
going to be very hard to take away a right that has been
granted to any particular group before.
A Chinese scholar recently commented, ``True, Chinese
peasants are not terribly enthusiastic about exercising their
right to cast ballots nowadays. But, if one wants to take that
right away, the situation will be rather explosive.''
Furthermore, over the past 14 years direct village
elections and villager self-government have become accepted as
a valuable alternative to the otherwise arcane and opaque
manner of selecting government leaders and people's deputies.
In many places, the candidates for the Party positions are
required to receive a direct popularity test. A low approval
rating will disqualify the candidates for running for the Party
positions.
In 1998 and 1999, during the last round of township/town
people's Congress deputy elections, new experiments of
selecting township government leaders appeared in no less than
three provinces, including an unprecedented direct election of
a township magistrate in Buyun, Sichuan Province.
Although these experiments were either declared
unconstitutional or unsuitable to be implemented, they created
a sense of hope and urgency. Many officials were preparing to
introduce new procedures to expand the nomination process and
make determination of formal candidates competitive and
transparent. This anticipated boom of political experiments did
not take place due to a Party circular in July 2001.
Despite this, on the last day of December 2001, Buyun
township went ahead again with its own direct election of a
township magistrate. One province in China introduced public
elections of magistrates in 45 percent of its 5,000 townships
and towns by June 2002.
More locales are going to use this so-called public
election method to choose township leaders. It is said that one
county in Sichuan Province used the same measure in picking a
county magistrate.
A scholar boldly predicted recently that one measure to be
adopted by the Party's 16th Congress will be the direct
election of Party leaders at the grassroots level. All these
progresses are being made in the context of direct village
elections.
Finally, no matter how democratic China is going to become
and what forms of electoral systems China is going to adopt,
voter education, voter registration, nomination and
determination of candidates, the use of secret ballot booths,
are all going to be great problems and logistical nightmares
that could lead to potential political violence and
instability.
The practice of direct village elections involves close to
600 million out of the 900 million Chinese voters. They have
always experienced these procedures and are getting more and
more familiar with the standardized procedures. This will
become the single most valuable asset in China's quest for
greater democracy.
Which way to go from here? No one has a definitive answer.
The flurry of experiments of the selection of township
magistrates in 1998 and 1999 were carried out under Jiang
Zemin's call for promoting grassroots democracy at the 15th
National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1997. It is
only logical to go down this road if the so-called ``three
represents'' are implemented according to its true essence.
If Jiang is determined to write the ``three represents''
into the Party charter and claim it to be his legacy, there is
little doubt that China will back away from the small steps it
has taken toward greater political reform.
The last topic is the Carter Center's China Village
Elections Project. The Carter Center initiated the China
Village Elections Project in 1997. After a successful pilot
phase, a 3-year agreement of cooperation was signed with the
national Ministry of Civil Affairs in March 1999.
This agreement allows the Carter Center to work primarily
in four Chinese provinces to install computers and software to
collect village elections data, to conduct training of election
officials at all levels, and the elected village committee
members in any province in China to observe village elections
everywhere, to help conduct civic education, and to invite
Chinese election officials to observe United States elections
and the elections that are monitored by the Carter Center in
other parts of the world.
In addition to working with the Ministry of Civil Affairs,
the Carter Center is also working with the National People's
Congress, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and other
NGOs [non-governmental organizations] in the area of designing
electoral procedures for the county and township people's
Congress, for the township and county magistrates, in
empowering the People's Congress system in China, and other
areas of cooperation.
The Center has provided substantial assistance in
conducting civic education, printing civil education materials,
and spreading information through the Website. We are about to
launch another Website called ``China Elections and
Governance'' in the near future.
The Center has also been coordinating its work in China
with other American and Western organizations, including IRI,
the Ford Foundation, NDI [National Democratic Institute], UNDP
[U.N. Development Program], and particularly the European
Commission [EC].
China is a significant nation whose international
responsibility, domestic stability, and economic prosperity
will directly impact the Asia-Pacific region and the world. All
these things cannot be sustained without an open and
transparent political system through which the government
derives its legitimacy and the people hold their leaders
accountable.
No single group of nations can initiate this most important
sea of change in China. China will have to do it by herself.
However, the involvement of the Western government and the
NGOs, in sowing the seeds of reform, sustaining the change, and
consolidating the gains is indispensable.
Imposing Western values on China without considering
China's unique circumstances is counterproductive. Ignoring
China altogether in its cautious and sometimes confusing quest
for greater democratization is outright erroneous. Working
outside China is helpful. Providing assistance inside China is
safer and all the more effective.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Liu appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. Liz Dugan.
... continued ... |
