The last round of village committee term-change election was from 2005 to 2007.  The recently completed work progress report on 2005-2007 village committee election by MCA indicated: China's village committee election is developing toward "normalization" and entering the period of "stabilization."  The electoral method has also undergone transformation from "election with candidates" to "election without candidates."

 

The history of village self-governance

Hezhai village in Yizhou city of Guangxi Province has been called "the first village of self-governance."  In February 1980, 85 households in six production teams used secret ballots to create the first village committee in China's history.  From then on such village committee organizations, with the quality of self-management, have spread across China.  

 

For nearly 30 years since then, village committee elections have become the best "democratic training" for China's nine hundred million farmers, and village self-governance has become the best "democratic school."

 

Zhan Chengfu, department head of Grassroots Authority and Community Building at MCA, is a scholarly official and has experienced in person the Organic Law on Villagers' Committees from its experimental stage to formal implementation.  He divided our country's self-governance into three stages—

 

Germination: in the early 1980s, China's farmers created the self-government style of village committee, which acquired constitutional recognition in 1982. 

 

Experimentation: on June 1st, 1988, implementation of the Provisional Organic Law on Villagers' Committees began and lasted for 10 years.

 

Getting on the right track: after 10 years of experimentation, on November 4th, 1998, official implementation of the revised Organic Law on Villagers' Committees began.  620,000 village committees were established across China by the end of 2007, 

Zhan stated that reform and opening up, village self-governance, the family responsibility system, and township enterprises were all the great inventions of China's farmers under the leadership of the Party; last year, the Party's 17th National Congress report promoted the grassroots self-governance system as one of the four major political systems.  

 

"Self-governance is our democracy's starting point in accordance with the reality in China.  The core of this democratic system is democratic election," said Zhao Shukai, researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council.
　　
Five major signs of "normalization"

 

On September 21st, 2007, 2154 voters under the burning sun participated in the "sea election" of their village head in Fuxing village of Luping town, Fuquan City, Guizhou Province.  Five candidates for the position delivered speeches and brought round after round of applause.

 

In Yishui County of Shandong Province, about 50,000 farmers who had been working elsewhere came back to vote in village elections in 2007.

 

According to incomplete statistics from the MCA, from 2005-2007, 626,655 village committees in the country's 31 provinces should have elections, accounting for 98.4% of all village committees; among them, 623,690 villages have already completed the elections, so the average completion rate across the country has reached 99.53%. 

Zhan described this round of village committee election as more "standardized."  He believed that this democratic election's scope and depth has increased, and has entered the stage of "normalization" and "stabilization."

 

The organization work for elections has become more complete.  Most provinces achieve the work objective of "unified term-change, unified arrangement, unified guidance, and unified implementation."

 

The electoral process put more emphasis on procedures.  According to incomplete statistics, in this round of elections, 95.85% of the villages used secret voting booths, and 85.35% of the villagers succeeded in electing their leaders without run-off elections. 

 

The composition of village committee members is becoming more stable.  From existing statistics, after this term-change, the education level of members has increased greatly: those with high school education and above account for 44%, or 8.37% higher than the previous term; the proportions of communist members and "Yijiantiao" (namely two posts—village committee chair and party secretary—on one shoulder) have also increased greatly: the former account for 66.49% on average, while the latter has reached 35%.

 

The voter participation rate has always been viewed as an important target.  In 2005-2007, this target was about 90.7%, or 0.66% lower than the last round of elections and 0.6% than the one before.

 

Zhan believed that under the larger background of deepening rural reform, accelerating urbanization, and the increase of the floating population, the decline of voter participation is another important sign of the village committee election "normalization."  "All voter participation in elections under a normal state would not be too high.  Maintaining a voter participation rate of 90%-92% on average across the country under the condition of high social mobility, via mobilization at various levels, and relying on voting methods such as entrusted voting and mobile ballot boxes is already not an easy matter."
　　
Candidates from "have" to "none"

Village committee "sea election" is experiencing the transformation from "election with candidates" to "election without candidates."

 

"Election with candidates" has been widely adopted in present village committee elections: villagers first cast votes to select a number of candidates, and then from among those selected candidates they cast votes to elect the village officials.

By contrast, in "election without candidates," all eligible voters can announce their candidacy through "self-recommendation," and then use methods such as campaign speeches and promises to win over other voters.  All villagers participate in one vote, and the "village officials" are directly produced according to the number of votes.

Experts point out that "election without candidates" has been created on the basis of "election with candidates."  It suits the needs of changes in rural social development, lowers election cost, saves election time, and further expands election transparency.  This method increases the value of villagers' votes.  

 

The MCA report indicated that in 2005-2007 pilot projects in 17 provinces have implemented election without pre-selected candidates.  Among them, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Chongqing have listed it as one of the major electoral methods.

 

Take Zhejiang as an example, already in 2002, in the sixth village committee term-change election in this province, 25% of the villages adopted this method; in the seventh village committee term-change election in 2005, the proportion was raised to 46%.

 

Zhan believes that if we are to make "election without candidates" as the major electoral method in future village committee elections, further standardization of relevant procedures are urgently needed.
　　
Three supervision models taking shape

 

The MCA report indicated that in 2005-2007, after the village committee election entered the stage of "normalization," the problems faced have also had some changes. 

 

Take administrative interference for example.  This problem was listed at the top of all problems related to election during the village committee term-change elections between 1995 and 2003.  In 2005-2007, while this problem still existed, it was already lowered to fifth on the list.  By contrast, previously non-obvious problems such as incomplete laws and regulations, violation of laws and regulations during elections, and unbalanced election progress have now become widespread problems. 
On factors obstructing election, the report showed that in 2005-2007, there existed mainly three factors: first were household and clan forces; second was improper or illegal campaign behaviors such as bribing the candidates; third was low voter participation, with many working elsewhere. 

 

During the 2005-2007 village committee election, three election supervision models were taking shape: Shandong and Beijing etc. established special election supervision institutions; Guangdong and Hubei etc. introduced the system of election observers; Jiangxi and Yunnan etc. adopted the system of judicial notarization. 

Zhan said that the emergence of these supervision models is exciting.  "In the future a system of compound supervision may be formed, with supervision not only coming from voters and candidates, but also from grassroots party organs, government, and people's congress, as well as from judicial departments." 

 

"Self-governance, along with democratic election, has become more established and flourished.  It needs to pay more attention to democratic decision-making, democratic management, and democratic supervision," stated Fang Ning, vice director of the Political Science Research Institute at the Chinese Academic of Social Sciences, "four democracies need balanced development."

 

For the article in Chinese see人民日报: 中国村官选举"常态化"