STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH DUGAN, REGIONAL PROGRAM
DIRECTOR, ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST, INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN
INSTITUTE [IRI], WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Dugan. Thank you. For me, it is an extreme honor to be
invited to be invited to participate on this panel, and I thank
you very much for that invitation.
It is also a distinct privilege to serve with such well-
respected colleagues and experts in this field not only here in
the United States, but most certainly on the ground in China.
I have a prepared statement which is available, but I think
if I can I will just speak a little more informally about some
of the more important thought that I would like to make.
IRI has been working on electoral reform issues in China
for about 8 years now. We have been active in 10 provinces. We
have observed more than 50 elections. These election
observation missions that we conduct are really not as
significant as some of the other activities that we have, but
we try always to present those officials who are responsible
for administering these elections with a set of recommendations
that are meant to help them strengthen the process that they
have already started.
We have also been very much involved in training of
election officials and of newly elected village chairmen to
help them understand better about how they can be responsive in
their new roles and how they need to be held accountable to the
voters who put them in place.
Another activity that we have tried to enact are regional
networking conferences, which allow for cross-fertilization of
ideas among provincial leaders who, again, have taken on this
task and responsibility of creating electoral reform efforts.
I mention, also, training and field work for domestic
monitors. These, of course, would be the Chinese themselves who
have some experience in the whole realm of elections throughout
China and who now can go and observe and make their own
recommendations. We have found this to be a particularly
successful effort because it is Chinese to Chinese.
I want to speak briefly about one particular village
election experience which I think allows an institute like IRI
to demonstrate a real sense of the progress that we have seen
in China.
Then, if you will indulge me, I will speak briefly about
urban election experimentation that is taking place in China
now and which I had a chance to observe firsthand in May.
In Fujian Province, IRI had its first experience as an
international observation team in 1994. We used Fujian Province
as perhaps the best example of how we have been able to track
progress over the course of time.
As you know, village elections are on 3-year cycles, so we
had a chance to observe, in two counties, these elections in
1994, and then again in 1997 in the same counties.
In 2000, we returned for the third time. This obviously is
the best kind of indicator of progress and this is what we were
able to note. The technical process has taken root.
There still is room for improvement, there still is room
for strengthening, but the very fundamental things have not
only been rooted in Fujian Province, but they have been
implemented in a very across-the-board way.
It is useful for us to kind of see that it does not remain
static. It is hard for us to know this in other provinces
because we have not had, as I say, this consecutive election
monitoring experience.
While it is true that elections vary in their level of
competitiveness, what we also saw in Fujian, and I have seen in
other places as well, is that challengers are winning. Not
always is the Party candidate being returned to his seat.
Write-in candidates are allowed on ballots. These are all signs
of some sense of real competitiveness there.
It is clear to us that the demand for reform is great.
There have been expressions of a desire to see direct elections
at higher levels, at the township level, as Liu Yawei has
mentioned. This has been voiced to us by not only villagers,
but also by local officials.
The pace of reform is not clear, and I think this is a
sentiment that we all feel strongly. It is very hard to
determine how quickly, or in fact how slowly, some of this may
happen.
Support for reform from Beijing is a wild card at this
point. The outcome of the 16th Party Congress this fall is
clearly a bit of an unknown variable for us. As Anne Thurston
has suggested, this is not a time when a commitment to
political reform or innovation is going to take place. It will
not be for some time to come after the results of the Party
Congress have had a chance to settle in.
Let me speak, briefly, about these urban elections that I
mentioned to you. For the past 2 years or more there have been
12 pilot cities that have been allowed to experiment with
elections for urban residence committees.
In the history of the People's Republic of China [PRC], the
primary organizing unit in most large Chinese cities was the
work unit, or the danwei, which provided the cradle-to-grave
social services known collectively as the ``iron rice bowl.''
Although urban residence committees existed, positions on
those committees were appointed by the municipal Party
apparatus and held primarily by the elderly, many times barely
literate people. Functions of these committees were limited to
menial neighborhood tasks and snooping into the urban citizens'
lives.
China's cities have been undergoing massive social and
economic change in recent years. With more and more state-owned
enterprise failures and increasing unemployment, the danweis
have become less important, in good part because they have
become less effective in many cities.
Simultaneously, the influx of migrant workers into urban
areas has dramatically altered the urban landscape. Crime has
increased, as have street protests and labor unrest. Residents
committees, as they were formerly conceived and structured, no
longer meet the needs of China's city dwellers.
The Chinese Government decided to permit elections for
urban residence committees on an experimental basis in the
interest of modernization and social stability. This is the
same rationale, as Anne so thoroughly pointed out, that was
first used to permit village elections more than 10 years ago.
It is worth noting, though, that in the absence of detailed
central government directives on urban elections, local
officials have a great deal of autonomy in designing and
implementing them. There is a lot of variety.
The hope, I believe, is that younger, more qualified
individuals will run for positions on the committees and that
elections will make these residence committees more accountable
to urban citizens.
The effort in Guangxi Autonomous Region, as elsewhere, is
brand-new. The people who are driving the effort have not
organized elections before. But this experiment also suggests
to me hope and urgency of the same kind that Liu Yawei suggests
in his remarks. These urban officials are using the village
regulations as their model, and they are most certainly headed
in the right direction.
It is clear that there need to be new applications of that
village model in the urban setting. In the interest of time,
perhaps I will not discuss that at great length now, but would
be delighted to address it during one of the questions. But let
me say that whatever those applications may be, they will stem
from nothing more than a learned competency and a technical
understanding.
So, let me try to make some summary points here before we
move on. The first one takes a page right out of Anne
Thurston's book, because she taught me so much about all of
this and she was a really fine mentor--still is.
Anne Thurston taught me that elections are not intuitive,
and she has already made the point herself.
They are learned skills. Training, therefore, is essential.
IRI is beginning to learn also that, during this training, we
need to focus not only on the how-to, but on the why.
The majority of provincial officials that we have had the
privilege to work with are very committed to trying to not just
fill a box by complying with the 1998 law in village elections.
They are dedicated to implementing sound practices and finding
ways to strengthen what has always been put in place.
Guangxi was a very good example. In Yunnan Province, we had
a chance also to observe elections. Yunnan was the last
province to initiate village elections, and they determined
that they would spend as much time as they could learning from
the mistakes of other provinces before they would put their own
rules in place.
I think that the Chinese have a luxury of some time that is
not existing in other countries that are trying to put on
elections. They have time to craft regulations that will limit
the opportunities for manipulation and defrauding of the voting
process. There is a long road ahead, there is no question about
it.
But the exercise of democracy is no small thing. It is hard
to quantify the results, despite demands to do so. I know this
is something that Liu Yawei also deals with on a consistent
basis. There is anecdotal evidence that exists. But, in our
minds, the genie is out of the bottle.
This process that villagers, and now urban dwellers, and
perhaps township dwellers also are beginning to experience, is
one that brings to them an evolution of the habit of selecting
your leaders and the habit of holding them accountable.
I will leave it at that. I appreciate your kind attention.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dugan appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Wolf. Thank you all very much.
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