A booming coastline province, Jiangsu is one of China's most affluent regions due to geography and its tradition of commerce. Along with its rapid economic development, the province has taken a leading position in China's rapidly-shifting tide of political reform. Since 2000, encouraged by Li Yuanchao, the then provincial leader, Jiangsu has held four major rounds of public post selection by experimenting with "open recommendation and selection"–a process that allows for more public participation yet lets the Party maintain control of the selection of local officials. [More public participation means that officials can apply for new positions and will compete with other candidates. Maintaining final control by the Party refers to the fact that the ultimate decision of any candidate's up or down remains with the Party's Organization apparatus.]

     

The province was once again in the limelight, when on March 27, 2008, sixteen official candidates from Nanjing's Municipal Government competed in a TV debate in hopes of being selected for one of four director's positions in the Labor Bureau, Drug Surveillance Bureau, Tourism Bureau and Government Administration Bureau. The event was broadcasted live on the local TV news channel and the Internet, making it the first ever live broadcast debate between official candidates in China. Currently, video clips of the debate can be viewed online at youtube.com.

     

Preparation for the debate began in February, when the Nanjing government announced plans to select officials for 47 government agencies through open recommendation and selection. More than 300 current and retired officials discussed and recommended candidates for the positions. According to a report from China.org, by March forty-three other positions at the director-general level had already been filled, leaving only four positions open in the newly-reshuffled municipal government.

     

The debate took place on March 27^th and consisted of five-minute speeches, a question and answer period, and the election. Sixteen candidates competed. More than 240 people from a diverse range of backgrounds, including People's Congress deputies and municipal officials, were invited to comment and vote on the candidates.  Telephone hotlines were also set up to allow viewers to comment on the candidates. It has been estimated that over 200,000 local residents viewed the broadcast live via either television or internet.

     

In contrast to a winner-takes-all election where the person who receives the most votes is elected to a given position, the three candidates with the most votes for each position were recommended to the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee and its Standing Committee, which made the final selection. The four final winners were announced on March 28^th in the plenary meeting of the Nanjing Municipal City Council. Three of the four new directors are Party members; their average age is 42.

     

This live broadcast of an official election debate has generated significant media coverage across the nation. "Although Nanjing residents didn't vote directly for the candidates, they had an opportunity to express their opinions and report any illegal behavior on the part of the candidates. It is one way for residents to participate in the election," a Nanjing local newspaper commented. A China Daily editorial concluded that "The institutionalization process of 'open recommendation and selection' is maturing… (The live broadcast) is significant for initiating a new stage of open and transparent selection of officials."

     

    Linking Qiu He to "open recommendation and selection"

     

In a commentary entitled "The complete story of Nanjing's open selection of directors," Ma Jing, a journalist from the Zhengzhou Evening News, linked Jiangsu's election experiment to Qiu He, a controversial reformer, former vice-governor of Jiangsu and member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee.

     

One of our previous issues of Tips and Links covered the story of the so-called "iron-handed" Qiu He. His radical policies and heavy-handed governance style had put Jiangsu province's poorest region onto the fast track of development. ("The Qiu He phenomenon: promotion of 'official with a personality' evokes national debate". See also "Qiu He & Zhang Jinming: two reformers, two different ways towards accountability.") A child from a farmer's family, Qiu was named Vice Party Secretary of Suqian City and later its Party Secretary in 2000. Called an "official with a personality," he implemented controversial but effective polices to increase economic growth, reduce crimes, curtail corruption and build a viable healthcare system. Although he was quickly promoted to membership in the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee of the southern province of Yunnan and Secretary of the Kunming Municipal Party Committee, his controversial political legacy lives on in Jiangsu. 

     

According to Ma, while in Jiangsu, Qiu He was an active advocate and promoter of "open recommendation and selection. This policy was first implemented at the village-level to select village heads and, after investigation from the provincial Party Committee, was later used as a method of experimentation to try and expand intra-party democracy in the selection process of higher provincial level officials.   

     

In comparison to the traditional "behind-close-doors" selection processes that are hotbeds for corruption, the new tools used in "open recommendation and selection" encourage public feedback through telephone hotlines, official websites, and mail in comments.  Increasingly, local governments have been willing to include public opinion in the selection of officials. Ma Jing argues that instead of a few people choosing officials from even fewer candidates, the new system of "open recommendation and selection" grants the right for a bigger representative body to choose from a wider choice of candidates. Candidates may be nominated by others or nominate themselves. Ma expressed her view that the first-ever TV broadcasting of official "debates has brought the system of "open recommendation and selection" to a new height of openness. Ma Jing's commentary "The complete story of Nanjing's open selection of directors" (南京公选局长台前幕后) can be seen here.

     

     

     

    Cui Wei: major drawbacks of "open recommendation and selection"

     

Cui Wei, a political commentator, argues that after two years of nation-wide promotion of "open recommendation and selection" in the cadre selection process, the system has shown some major drawbacks and has fallen short of its aim to curb rampant corruption. Cui listed five major failures of the "open recommendation and selection" system.

     

First, Cui points out that local officials have the authority to make qualification requirements for "open recommendation."  They can easily manipulate the qualification standards to add clauses like "college education" or "leadership experience at the village level" to include their favorite candidates or exclude candidates they dislike.  Second, favored candidates are secretly given the news of an "open recommendation" days earlier than their potential competitors, giving them more time to network and lobby for votes. Third, though officials are not allowed to openly endorse a particular candidate, they can certainly exert significant influence through the "recommendation" of a particular candidate.

     

Bribery, Cui argues, is the fourth drawback of "open recommendation and selection." Although designed to reduce bribery and selling of government positions, "open recommendation and selection" has had the opposite effect: before candidates only needed to bribe the officials in charge of cadre selection and appointment. Now, candidates can spend even more money on bribing all the voters. Finally, Cui argues that "open recommendation and selection" encourages potential candidates to focus so much on courting officials and voters that the candidates fail to produce real results in their work.

     

Instead of curtailing corruption in the cadre selection process, "open recommendation and selection" is showing increasingly negative side-effects.  At the end of his essay, Cui asked the reader the following questions: Did local officials deceive the central government in the reform experiment? Did the local government accept the method halfheartedly? Or, maybe the local government abused the new system? To read Cui Wei's "Five major drawbacks of 'open recommendation and selection'" please click here (崔巍："公推公选"的五大弊端). 

     

    Further thoughts on Nanjing's "open recommendation and selection"

    

Lu Ning ("各位领导"冒号……) claims that the frenzied media attention on the TV debate was misplaced.  He argues that the debate was primarily for show and is not a significant step forwards. He also says the debate was China's toothpaste-squeezing, bit-by-bit reform of official selection procedure. Zuo Zhiying from the Southern Metropolitan Daily, has reported on the  success of former cadres who were selected with "open recommendation and selection" to showcase the effectiveness of the system ("Shockwave in Nanjing: silent transformation of official attitude," 南京选官冲击波：官场心态悄变 ).   

     

A commentary in the Xinjing News also shares thoughts on how to improve the "open recommendation and selection" system and argues that it may be used more extensively to promote public opinion-oriented official selection reform ("Bigger steps for'open recommendation and selection'reform"中国"公推公选"改革步伐可以再大些).

     

     

    TIPS & LINKS

    Issue 28, April 10, 2008    

    China Program, The Carter Center

     

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