[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
POLITICAL CHANGE IN CHINA:
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE REFORMS
=======================================================================
ROUNDTABLE
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 15, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov
_____
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
28-142 WASHINGTON : 2006
_________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free
(866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail:
Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate
House
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska, Chairman
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
GORDON SMITH, Oregon
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
MAX BAUCUS, Montana
CARL LEVIN, Michigan
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa, Co-Chairman
DAVID DREIER, California
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
SANDER LEVIN, Michigan
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
STEVEN J. LAW, Department of Labor
PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State
David Dorman, Staff Director (Chairman)
John Foarde, Staff Director (Co-Chairman)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS
Goldman, Merle, professor emerita of Chinese history, Boston
University, Executive Committee member, Fairbank Center for
East Asian Research, Harvard University, Boston, MA............ 2
Fewsmith, Joseph, Director, East Asian Studies Program, professor
of International Relations and Political Science, Boston,
University, Boston, MA......................................... 6
Xie, Gang, Senior Program Officer, Law and Governance Programs,
The Asia Foundation, Washington, DC............................ 10
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Goldman, Merle................................................... 30
Fewsmth, Joseph.................................................. 32
Xie, Gang........................................................ 40
POLITICAL CHANGE IN CHINA:
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE REFORMS
----------
MONDAY, MAY 15, 2006
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10
a.m., in room 2255, Rayburn House Office Building, David Dorman
(Senate Staff Director) presiding.
Also present: John Foarde, House Staff Director; Carl
Minzner, Senior Counsel; Pamela N. Phan, Senior Counsel;
William A. Farris, General Counsel; and Kara Abramson, Counsel.
Mr. Dorman. Well, it is 10 o'clock. I think we can get
started.
On behalf of our Chairman, Senator Chuck Hagel, and our
Co-Chairman, Representative Jim Leach, I would like to welcome
everybody to this staff-led Issues Roundtable of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
This particular roundtable is entitled, ``Political Change
in China: Public Participation and Local Governance Reform.''
We are very pleased because we have an exceptionally
distinguished panel to help the Commission understand this very
important issue.
But before we get to introductions, I would like to explain
just briefly how our staff roundtables work. First, I will make
a short statement to introduce the roundtable topic. Then I
will follow with introductions for each of our witnesses. After
each introduction, each witness will have 10 minutes to make an
opening statement. After all the witnesses have been introduced
and made statements, we will begin question and answers. Each
person on the dais will have an opportunity to ask a question
and hear an answer. We try to keep each round to five minutes,
so that we have ample time for everyone to ask one or two
questions. We will keep asking questions and hearing answers
until 11:30 a.m., or until we run out of questions.
I have been with the Commission a number of years now, and
we have never run out of questions and answers before our 90
minutes were up, so I am certain that we will fill the entire
time. We will try to end promptly at 11:30, as we have promised
our panelists today.
I will start now with a short statement introducing the
roundtable.
More Chinese citizens want a voice in the decisions that
affect their lives, and some activists have publicly called for
change.
Environmental activists have challenged the government on
hydroelectric and other infrastructure projects. Intellectuals
have submitted positions criticizing authoritarian policies,
and rural farmers are forming associations to protect their
collective interests. But Chinese officials use regulations,
and sometimes prison terms, to suppress direct criticism of
senior government leaders or Communist Party rule.
At the same time, the government is experimenting with some
limited governance reforms. These reforms seek expansion of
citizen political participation at the local level, while
giving the Party new tools to govern a rapidly changing China.
This roundtable will review Chinese citizens' demands for
greater political participation, examine official Chinese
efforts at limited reform, and consider whether these trends
offer any possibility for meaningful political change in China.
I would now like to introduce our first panelist, Professor
Merle Goldman, who has testified to the Commission before, and
we are delighted that she has agreed to join us again.
Professor Goldman is Professor Emerita of Chinese History at
Boston University, and Executive Committee Member at the
Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University.
Professor Goldman is the author of numerous books and articles
on Chinese politics and citizen political participation in
China, including her most recent book, ``From Comrade to
Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China.'' Other
works include ``Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China,''
``Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Decade,'' and ``China's
Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent.'' In addition to teaching at
Boston University, Professor Goldman serves as an adjunct
professor at the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service
Institute.
Professor Goldman, thank you very much for coming today.
You have 10 minutes for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF MERLE GOLDMAN, PROFESSOR EMERITA OF CHINESE
HISTORY, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, AND EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBER,
FAIRBANK CENTER FOR EAST ASIAN RESEARCH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
BOSTON, MA
Ms. Goldman. Thank you for inviting me. This is a great
topic and I am happy to be able to talk about it.
All of you know that China has had sweeping economic
reforms and has had few political reforms. Most of you know
about elections for village head and village councils. This is
certainly an important political reform, but there have been
others as well. For
example, the fact that Deng Xiaoping decreed that the head of
the Party can serve only two five-year terms means that when
there was the transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002-
2004, it was the smoothest transition in Chinese Communist
history. The reason for the Party's introduction of these
political reforms was to bring about stability after the chaos
of the Cultural Revolution.
By contrast, my new book, ``From Comrade to Citizen: The
Struggle for Political Rights in China'' focuses on political
changes from below without the Party's sanction. I define a
``citizen'' as one who asserts one's rights to participate in
political affairs without being told to do so.
During the Mao Zedong period (1949-1976), there was
criticism of the Party during the 100 Flowers movement (1956-
June 1957) and China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when Mao
mobilized Red Guards to go out and rebel against the Party
because he thought the Party was conspiring against him. In
these two cases, Mao mobilized people to criticize the Party in
efforts to enhance his own personal stature.
What is different in the post-Mao period is that people
assert their political rights without being ordered to do so.
One group that asserted political rights was the members of the
Cultural Revolution generation. These were the young people who
Mao mobilized to rebel against authority, particularly against
Party officials. When they caused chaos, Mao sent them to the
countryside, where far away from authority, their parents, and
the Party, they began to form their own groups, engage in
discussions of political issues and question the political
system.
Thus after Mao died and they returned to the cities, they
became the ones that led what came to be called the Democracy
Wall Movement (late 1978-1979). They used the methods they had
learned in the Cultural Revolution--putting up big wall
posters, engaging in public debates, and printing and
distributing pamphlets. They called for political reforms as
well as economic reforms and they criticized the Marxist-
Leninist Party-state. Their demands called for some form of
checks and balances so that China would ``never again'' be
ruled by a leader with unlimited power.
Deng Xiaoping allowed the Democracy Wall to continue off
and on for almost a year because he used it in his effort to
get rid of the Maoists still in the government. Once that was
accomplished, however, he then cracked down on the Democracy
Wall participants. Members of the other generation involved in
trying to assert their political rights in the post-Mao era
were the participants in the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations,
which spread to virtually every city in China. Again, the Party
sent the military to crack down on them very severely on June
4, 1989.
Although the Party arrested the leaders of these two
movements, China released most of them in the mid-1990s in an
effort to get the Olympics in 2008. Their release is an example
of how external pressure can bring about some kind of change in
the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. Another example of
the result of external pressure is China's signing of the two
UN covenants: the one on economic and social rights in 1997 and
the one on political and civil rights, in 1998. Though the
first covenant has been ratified by China's National People's
Congress, the second has not yet been ratified.
While Mao did not care what the outside world thought of
what he did, China's post-Mao leaders do care. They want to be
accepted in the international community and be seen as playing
by the rules of the international community. It does not mean,
however, that the Party is going to change its policies because
of external pressure. But Chinese who seek to assert their
political rights refer to Chinese signature on these covenants
as well as Article 35 in the Chinese Constitution that calls
for freedom of association and freedom of expression as the
basis for their actions. A similar approach was used by
dissidents in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the
1970s and 1980s, who used the fact that the Soviet Union had
signed the Helsinki Accords as the basis for their demands for
human rights.
The release of political prisoners of the Democracy Wall
and 1989 movements led to new kinds of political actions in the
1990s. In my book, I describe, for example, the effort to
establish an opposition political party in 1998 called the
China Democracy Party.
The leaders of this party were veterans of the Democracy
Wall and 1989 Tiananmen movements, in alliance with small
entrepreneurs, farmers, and workers. It is the first time in
the People's Republic that intellectuals joined with other
classes in some kind of political action.
This effort to establish an opposition Party continued for
almost six months before the Party cracked down. In part, this
movement was able to get off the ground because at the time of
its inception in June 1998, China hosted a stream of important
foreign officials. Also, the China Democracy Party founders
used procedures to register their party that were used to
register NGOs. They registered the China Democracy Party as a
local NGO in Hangzhou and then registered it as NGOs in cities
along the coast and then inland. Next, they registered it as a
regional NGO in China's northeast and the plan was eventually
to register China Democracy Party as a national NGO. They were
able to get this movement organized so quickly through use of
the new technologies, particularly the Internet and cell
phones. They had codes of communication that got around the
Party's censorship and filters.
The emergence of this multi-class effort of intellectuals,
small business people, workers, and farmers is unique in the
People's Republic. The intellectuals during the Mao period as
well as during Confucian times saw themselves as a class apart
and did not seek to join with other classes in political
actions. When workers tried to participate in the 1989
Tiananmen demonstration, for example, the students refused to
let them join their demonstration and isolated them in an area
away from their movement. The China Democracy Party leaders not
only saw themselves as an elite group, but they also knew that
ever since the emergence of the Solidarity movement of
intellectuals and workers in Poland in 1980 that helped to
bring down the Polish Communist Party, the Chinese leadership
feared such an alliance of workers and intellectuals in China.
It could be that having already lost their elite status because
of their political activities, the leaders of the China
Democracy Party felt they had nothing to lose by joining with
other classes.
Therefore, it is likely that the forces pushing for
political reform in China at the start of the 21st century will
be similar to the coalition that attempted to establish the
China Democracy Party--some alliance of disestablished
intellectuals with workers, small entrepreneurs, and farmers.
It will not be the bourgeoisie, an independent middle class,
that we associate with rise of democracy in the West. At
present, China's rising middle class is not independent.
Because China's newly rich entrepreneurs have to rely on the
help of local Party officials in order to get access, for
example, to land, licenses, and resources, they are dependent
on the help of local Party officials. Moreover, as soon as they
become successful, they are quickly recruited into the Party.
Therefore, it is other members of China's new middle class--
journalists, defense lawyers, academics, and disestablished
intellectuals, who support themselves as free-lance writers,
small entrepreneurs, or workers who have been the leaders for
political reform.
In particular, the leaders of the Democracy Wall and 1989
Tiananmen movements in alliance with small entrepreneurs,
workers, and farmers, whom, I believe, will be a force for
political change in China in the future. How long it will take,
I will not say, but I think that change is already underway on
the ground.
I conclude my book with examples of how the concept of
political rights has spread beyond the intellectual class to
the population as a whole. Actually, I witnessed one such
example in a protest of farmers on the outskirts of Xi'an in
front of the Big Goose Pagoda in 2004. The farmers were
demanding their rights to land that had been taken away from
them for modernization projects. A group of farmers held up
wall posters, which said: ``You have taken away our land; we
have not been compensated,'' or ``We have not been compensated
enough.'' And the posters declared in big bold letters ``We
want our rights.'' This is just one example of how the concept
of rights is moving beyond the intellectual class to the
population at large.
Kevin O'Brien, a political scientist at Berkeley, points
out that people ``act as citizens by their actions.'' Yet, what
is happening in the early 21st century is that Chinese farmers
and workers are also acting as citizens in what they say.
Rights consciousness is spreading to the Chinese population at
large. Thus, I will end on this optimistic note. I believe, as
we have seen in other post-Confucian countries--Japan and South
Korea--and also in Taiwan, that political changes are beginning
in China due primarily to pressure from below. Of course, China
is much bigger, much more complicated, and has had less direct
contact with Western democratic countries until the past few
decades than the other post-Confucian countries. It may take
longer than in the other post-Confucian countries.
Nevertheless, the beginning of a rights consciousness that has
spread beyond a small group of intellectuals to the population
as a whole, I believe, is the beginning of that change.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Goldman appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Dorman. Professor Goldman, thank you very much for a
very timely statement, I think, and it will certainly generate
lots of questions on the panel. Thank you for that.
Next, I would like to introduce Professor Joseph Fewsmith,
who is the Director of East Asian Studies Program and Professor
of International Relations and Political Science at Boston
University. Professor Fewsmith is the author of numerous books
and articles on Chinese politics and political reforms,
including ``China Since Tiananmen: The Politics of
Transition,'' ``Elite Politics in Contemporary China,'' and
``The Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and
Economic Debate.''
Professor Fewsmith, thank you very much for agreeing to
testify to the Commission again. You have 10 minutes. Thank
you.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH FEWSMITH, DIRECTOR OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES
PROGRAM, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND POLITICAL
SCIENCE, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, MA
Mr. Fewsmith. Thank you very much for inviting me back to
testify to the Commission. I respect your work, and you ask
good questions. If I make my statement long enough I will not
have to face too many of your good questions. [Laughter.]
My good colleague, Professor Goldman, tends to focus on
activists who are bringing about, or trying to bring about,
political change in China. They are, if you will, an external
force that tries to force the Party to make positive changes.
Over the last year or so I have been focusing more on what the
Party itself is doing.
As we all know, Chinese society is a pluralizing,
economically
diverse society and it, in many ways, simply does not match an
old-style, hierarchically organized Leninist, Communist Party.
The Party itself understands that and is beginning to do a
number of things to meet the change that is coming not just
from activists, but from all sorts of actors in society.
Some of the reasons for the changes that I see, and I will
get to those changes in a second, are the results of village
elections. That is one thing. It is not so much the village
elections themselves, which have been somewhat criticized, I
think, in China recently. Those on the right are disappointed
that they have not led to raising the level of elections to the
township or to the county level; those on the left criticize
the elections for allowing village power to fall into the hands
of the new local elite, the moneyed elite. But what the
elections did was, first and foremost, to introduce a
principle: that people have the right to choose their own
leaders. Second of all, it gave the village chief, the
government side of the local government structure, a legitimacy
that the Party secretary did not have. That has set off
frictions at the village level and above, and those tensions
have forced the Party in some ways to respond to this pressure,
and to a limited degree to begin to look at ways that can
incorporate popular mandates into its own rule. So, elections
are one factor.
Another factor is generational change. Generational change
is also important, not because younger people are necessarily
brighter, though many in the younger generation in China are
far better educated than their elders, but because a first
generation revolutionary elite has a certain legitimacy that
comes from the victory of the revolution. As you pass to the
second, third, or fourth generation, depending on how you are
counting, there arises an inevitable political question that
all political systems must face: Why do you have power and why
do I not? What gives you the legitimacy? As you go through
generational change, I think those sorts of questions become
much more pointed.
Third, as we all know, there have been a lot of problems
throughout China in terms of corruption and abuse of power.
There is a need to supervise the local political leaders. This
is a need that is felt both by the center of the system, as
well as by the citizen. In that sense, there is a somewhat
strange collaboration between the center of the Party, the
Party-State leadership, and the citizens of China who want to
bring about a more orderly, more supervised, more regularized
use of political power at the local level.
Finally, I would agree with Professor Goldman that there is
a changed consciousness in China. This is really very difficult
to define, and I have not seen really good survey research on
this yet, but I think it is quite palpable.
In part, this is because more people have greater wealth;
once the stomach is a little full, you can think about other
things. But it is also because of greater mobility in the
society. Many people throughout the country, perhaps
particularly along the east coast, but I think throughout the
country, have traveled to other places and they pick up ideas.
One channel of those ideas, by the way, has been army soldiers
who have been recruited, trained, and assigned to serve in
other places, and then they come home to look at the abuse of
power at the local level. Their experience seems to give them a
greater confidence to confront abuses. Others on the move
around the country are merchants who have gone to other places,
and bring back new ideas. So there are a lot of reasons.
So what are the types of political change? In the written
statement that I have submitted to you, and I will spare you
the agony of listening to me read it, I point to two broad
types of change. This is somewhat arbitrary, but perhaps is a
useful first cut. One is an effort to readjust the relationship
between the Party and actors in the society, and the other is
inner-Party democracy.
First, on the readjustment of relations between the Party
and society, I cite two examples. One, is the rise of chambers
of commerce. This is by no means a universal phenomenon. The
chambers of commerce, which is another name for the
Gongshanglian, or the All-China Association of Industry and
Commerce. In the North China Plain, chambers tend to be very
weighted down with official dominance. They tend to be not very
active and not very interesting, although there are some
interesting private associations that are growing up apart from
these official chambers.
In southern China, and particularly in the city of Wenzhou,
chambers of commerce have become quite active, and they are
very interesting. As you undoubtedly know, Wenzhou became
famous in the 1980s for its model of private entrepreneurship,
and it is really a fascinating phenomenon to watch this
previously extremely poor, overpopulated area just take off
economically.
My first trip to Wenzhou was actually last year, and it was
really interesting. This is a modern city of about 5 million
people. It may not be on Shanghai standards, but it has got all
the designer stores, broad highways, and the merchants are
doing quite well.
A significant number of the chambers of commerce there have
been developing ``outside the system,'' as they say in China.
That is to say, business people in a particular line have been
grouping together for a variety of purposes. One, of course, is
to ensure quality control. This initially started, as I
mentioned in my statement, because Wenzhou merchants not only
became famous for producing cheap goods in the sense of price,
but also ``cheap'' in that derogatory sense of not being very
good.
When angry residents of Hangzhou burned 5,000 shoes, it
motivated the shoe manufacturers in Wenzhou to want to do
something about it, and a chamber of commerce was the answer.
In many instances, these chambers can work with government
to come up with policies. So there is a collaboration between
government and the private sector that simply did not exist a
few years ago.
Much more interesting, I think, in terms of the sorts of
change that you are looking at, is north of Wenzhou there is a
city called Wenling, 1.1 million people, and they have been
doing something that they call ``democratic consultative
meetings,''--minzhu kentan hui. They are very much like the
public hearing systems that you are familiar with.
In most of these villages and townships under Wenling, you
put up a poster announcing a hearing on paving a road, or
building a separate business district, or building a school, or
whatever. In other words, these hearings revolve around capital
construction projects and the use of public funds, and anybody
who is interested may come.
That has, I think, brought limited, but important, change.
Issues are aired publicly. Government officials feel at least
some pressure of being supervised. That is a model that I think
is being touted quite a bit throughout China these days. I have
not yet seen it spread, but I am reasonably optimistic that you
will see similar phenomena cropping up in other parts of China.
My initial inclination was to write off inner-Party
democracy as an excuse to avoid the real thing. To a certain
extent, that is true. Yet, the more I have looked at this
phenomenon, the more I have thought that there is something
interesting going on here. Moreover, if you are going to match
some of the pressures that are going on at the local level, the
Party itself needs to become, at least in some ways, more
democratic, by which I mean conducting its affairs in a more
open and transparent manner.
Now, there have been a number of interesting variations on
this. The permanent representation system is one system that is
being adopted in a large number of places in China.
According to the Chinese Communist Party's own
constitution, the Party Congress is supposed to be the most
authoritative organ; it selects the central committee or the
relevant Party committee at different levels, which then picks
a standing committee, which picks a secretary. But, of course,
the way it has worked in the past, is that the Party committee
meets, they are told who to vote for, they vote, they go home
the next day and they are gone. It is a very honorific sort of
function.
Now the effort is to extend the terms of Party delegates to
make it a full five-year term with annual meetings. The whole
purpose of this is to readjust the relationship between these
Party representatives, the various committees, and to exercise
some real
supervision.
This is still a fairly new system. The earliest that I know
of dates back to 1988. More recently, you have had some from
the mid-1990s, and particularly the early 2000s. But on the
other hand, it has become extended throughout several parts of
China and has some potential.
I think time is running a bit short. Let me just mention
the ``public promotion, public election''--gongtui gongxuan--
system, which has been predominantly practiced in Sichuan,
although there are parts of Jiangsu Province that have done
this as well.
Gongtui means to publicly promote or to publicly recommend.
In different areas, this takes on different forms. It could be
simply that all Party members in that area participate. That
is, of course, a very limited type of political participation,
but a lot more than you used to have. In other areas, it does
mean public. That is to say, particularly at the village level,
that all villagers might say, ``Of all Party members here, who
would we recommend as the Party secretary? '' So, again, there
is this effort to incorporate at least a degree--I do not want
to exaggerate, but a degree--of public will to legitimize the
selection of the Party secretary.
So what are the implications of all of this? First of all,
you are introducing at least some limited democratic principles
into the Party, at least at the local level. By ``local
level,'' I mean, at the village and township level. I have not
yet seen this reach up to the county level.
This expansion to the township level is interesting
because, as I mentioned at the start, the village elections
have not been extended to the township level--except in a few
instances--so they seem to be taking sort of a circuitous route
to introduce at least limited democratic principles at a higher
level, but in ways that do not threaten the Party itself.
This system appears to be a controlled introduction of
political participation. That is, I suppose, the second point,
is that the Party is not losing control. The Party is still
very much in control at all levels of society, but it is
beginning to change in limited ways and at the local level.
Now, the question that I suppose that you are really
interested in and which I really cannot answer, is: Is this a
step toward
democracy or, perhaps, a step away from democracy? My
inclination is to think that what is happening is that new
mechanisms are evolving that will, at least to a limited
extent, relieve social pressure, re-legitimize the Party, at
least to a certain extent, and alleviate some of the pressures
to implement Western-style democracy.
Is this good or bad? If it leads to better governance and
more political participation, that would seem to be positive.
Whether this ultimately leads to something of a more thorough-
going democratic nature is very difficult at this point to say.
It may, as I just noted, in some way alleviate pressures to do
precisely that.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fewsmith appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Dorman. Professor Fewsmith, thank you very much once
again for a very useful and interesting statement.
Our next panelist is Mr. Xie Gang, who is former Senior
Program Officer, Law and Governance Programs, for the Asia
Foundation. Mr. Xie has managed and supervised Asia Foundation
projects in mainland China for the past six years. The Asia
Foundation conducts projects in China directed at improving
rural governance, government accountability, legal reform, and
the conditions facing migrant women workers.
Mr. Xie, you have 10 minutes for an opening statement.
Thank you for agreeing to testify.
STATEMENT OF XIE GANG, SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER, LAW AND
GOVERNANCE PROGRAMS, THE ASIA FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Xie. Thank you for inviting me to speak here. It is an
entirely different experience for me.
What I would like to talk about is my own experience and
observations of The Asia Foundation's rural governance programs
in China.
In the past four years, we have been providing grants to a
number of grantees with U.S. Government money and private money
to work on improvement of rural governance in China. We first
started off our programs to look for some alternative dispute
resolution mechanisms. That is where we did programs to look
into the types and causes of the rural conflicts. I have listed
those programs in my statement.
The first program was a survey. After we did the survey, we
felt that the problems were not just as simple as providing
solutions to reconcile conflicts. It looked like more of a
structural problem with the rural governance, especially at the
township level.
So, our following programs turned into some sort of effort,
on the governance side, to try to improve the governance by
holding the government more accountable. That is where we have
some programs to look for some mechanisms for more
transparency, for better management, standard procedures that
the farmers could follow or the local governments could follow
in providing public services, and that is where we did those
programs.
We also provided training for those farmers who tried to
complain and petition to the government about their problems,
where their rights had been disrupted. Also, we tried to train
some township employees so they could better interact with the
farmers when the farmers came to petition and complain.
On the farmers' side, we also tried to provide some kind of
assistance by helping set up farmers' associations. That is
where we
provided a grant to look into the existing types of farmers'
associations, especially in areas like Hunan province where
most of the farmers try to protect their rights and have most
of the problems.
Then after the survey, we felt that farmers' associations,
at that time, about three years ago, could be politically
sensitive. So we and our grantees came up with the idea that we
would focus more on the farmers' production cooperatives. Our
grantees hope, in the long run, that such cooperatives could
evolve into some type of farmers' organizations that may help
protect their rights and help improve local governance.
About my observations, I have listed some of them in the
statement, but I would like to talk more about my observations
of current situations, because most of our programs were
implemented before the agriculture tax was abolished. Now that
the agriculture tax has been abolished, we want to look at what
is going on in rural areas, and how will that affect local
governance and political reform in rural China.
From our experience and programs, it can be summarized
that, in general, there are two types of conflicts. To put it
in the farmers' words, one type of conflict is caused by the
fact that local cadres do things they are not supposed to do.
The other type of conflict is caused when, the farmers say,
local cadres do not do what they are obligated to do. Our
programs are actually looking to the first one. Currently, most
of the conflicts belong to the second type.
After the government introduced a new agricultural policy
to protect farmers' rights, and abolished the tax, it looks
like the actions of the grassroots government have been
restrained more by the central government and they have to
follow certain types of rules and regulations. However, these
new policies have not really helped change the local governance
or improve the functions of the grassroots government. For
example, there have been new types of conflict since the
agriculture tax was abolished.
The first type of conflict was caused by a number of
farmers who had been paying the tax for many years and were not
happy with those farmers who had not paid taxes. They were
complaining. Farmers who had been paying the tax were not happy
after the tax was abolished because they felt they did not
enjoy equal treatment, and they had been following instructions
and paying the taxes all along. Those who had not been paying
the taxes had gotten away with it. So, that could be another
new type of conflict.
The other conflict is farmers who had given up their land
because they did not want to pay tax for many years, though
they went into other areas and were involved in other
businesses. Now that tax is abolished, they want to come back
and get the land they had given up, but they cannot sometimes.
That is another type of conflict.
The third, of course, is after the tax was abolished, the
local government has tremendous financial problems. They are
now short of revenue. They used that as a pretext to stop doing
some of the public services that they are supposed to provide,
and farmers now complain that the cadres do not do things that
they are supposed to do. So, that is another type of conflict.
Personally, I think this problem in rural areas is actually
rooted in the long history of under-investment in agriculture.
Even throughout the 50 years after the People's Republic was
founded, agriculture has been very much under-invested, and
farmers have just been left alone to look after their own
production and well-being. Because of all these years without
enough investment,
agriculture is under-developed. Before the agriculture tax was
abolished, it only accounted for 4 percent of the central
government revenue. Last year, agriculture only accounted for
12 percent of GDP, including animal husbandry, fisheries, and
forestry.
So agriculture is somehow insignificant in Chinese economic
development, and it has been neglected for a long time. That
kind of under-investment has caused all these financial
problems, and that could be a very basic reason for the lack of
good governance in the countryside.
Also, for the township government, there seems to be an
intention to reform agencies at the grassroots level. However,
the township government is now challenged with many problems.
The very fundamental problem, I think, is the fact that it
has been given too many functions since the day it was born,
because the township government is the lowest level of Chinese
governance structure, and it has all the functions that all the
higher levels of government are given.
It has the function to develop the local economy, it has
the function to work on United Front and Party Central
Committee issues, and also it has family planning, tax
collection, and all these functions. But it does not have
enough revenue to work on these functions, so it has been a
structural problem since the day it was established after the
People's Commune was abolished.
The second problem, of course, is that the township
government is now over-staffed. Because of so many functions,
it has a large staff body. To reform the township government
means to lay off a large number of cadres.
So what can we do about this? Scholars have been discussing
abolishing the township government. Also, there are many other
pilot experiences to improve the local governance.
But I think the final solution to the improvement of local
governance should be focused within the structure of the
township. In other words, the reform has to be initiated within
the current political framework. There is also a strong force
within the government to start reform. But the problem is how
to initiate the solution to the problem and which way they can
go.
The other problem is to improve the farmers' awareness,
because the government talks about protection of farmers'
rights. But the farmers' rights have to be eventually protected
by themselves. I do not think there can be immediate political
reform. It has to be a long-term effort. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Xie appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you very much, Mr. Xie.
I will start with a series of short questions for the
panelists.
Professor Goldman, thank you again for speaking to the
Commission. It is greatly appreciated. I wanted to ask, if we
could look out over the horizon, what are the possibilities,
and what sort of conditions would have to develop, for another
China Democracy Party to emerge?
Ms. Goldman. It would be necessary to have leaders in the
People's Republic of China who were willing to countenance what
is already happening on the ground. An ideal scenario would be
to have a leader comparable to Chiang Ching-kuo, who, when he
came to power in 1987 after the death of his father, Chiang
Kai-shek, recognized the changes that were occurring on the
ground--a more open press, civil society and beginnings of
organized political groups--and confirmed the reality of
democratic institutions that were already functioning.
In other words, I think it is going to be very difficult to
get an opposition party off the ground in China as long as the
Communist Party retains its legitimacy and capacity to repress
any protest. If there should be some slowing of the economy,
which we have not yet seen, that could undermine the legitimacy
of the Party, which is based on its ability to maintain a high
rate of growth. Also, if the Party is unable to slow the
increasing disparities between the urban and rural sectors and
deal with the issues of education, healthcare, and social
security in the countryside, that too may provoke growing
protests that have been estimated at 87,000 in 2005. Though the
Taiwan scenario is rejected by the leaders as well as ordinary
people in the People's Republic, China would be fortunate to
follow the Taiwan trajectory. There is no question that Chiang
Kai-shek and the Kuomintang were very repressive when they
retreated to Taiwan in the late 1940s, but in the early 1950s,
they began village elections and then moved grassroots
elections up the political ladder to the township, the
counties, the provinces levels and finally national level.
China introduced village elections in the late 1980s, but with
a few exceptions, elections have not moved up to higher
political levels. It is likely that the leadership fears
elections at the township level, for example, because, in order
to have township elections, it is necessary to organize
politically, because a township encompasses several thousand
inhabitants rather than the 900 or so inhabitants of a village
in which everyone knows one another. There is more freedom of
expression in China today than during the Mao era, but the
regime cracks down severely on any unsanctioned efforts to
organize politically. What the Hu Jintao government fears most
is the establishment of any political organization outside the
control of the Party.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
Did either Professor Fewsmith or Mr. Xie want to comment?
You do not need to.
Mr. Fewsmith. Why do I not wait for the next question?
Mr. Dorman. All right. Good. Thank you.
Mr. Fewsmith. Then maybe I can pick up some things.
Mr. Dorman. Well, this is a question that goes both to
Professor Fewsmith and Mr. Xie. I had the opportunity to read
your written statement just before the roundtable, Professor
Fewsmith, and you point to the importance of political
entrepreneurship at the local level.
In Mr. Xie's written testimony, he describes a real lack of
that sort of capability at the township level.
Could either or both of you comment on the reasons that
political reforms have not moved from the village to the
township level? To what extent is this due to a lack of
enlightened political leaders at that level, as Mr. Xie
describes in his written testimony, or is this being blocked
from the center?
You may not have had the opportunity to read Mr. Xie's
statement, and I do not want to misquote, but I think he was
fairly disappointed with the capabilities of officials at the
township level. Could you comment on whether this lack of
political entrepreneurship is one reason we have not seen
political reforms move up one level?
Mr. Fewsmith. All right. Let me try to generalize a little
bit from some of the examples that I know. First of all, as
Professor Goldman just said, the Party is very strong. If you
would like to have a political experiment at a particular
level, you really do need to have the support, at least the
tacit support, of higher-level political leaders. If you just
decide to have a local experiment, your career is not likely to
last very long. If you push it way beyond that, you may find
yourself in some serious trouble.
One of my first observations is that the sorts of political
reforms that I was addressing in my statement do have at least
the tacit political support of the Party, specifically of the
Organization Department of the Party, which undoubtedly is a
very conservative organ, but it is also extremely well aware of
what is going on. They are not stupid. They do surveys, they
understand the tensions, and they are trying to devise
solutions to those while maintaining the structure of the
Party. That statement applies both to the Central Organization
Department, which has carried out a lot of surveys and has had
a lot of discussions on these sorts of issues, as well as local
organizations.
So, for instance, I think there is quite a bit of evidence
that the provincial Organization Department in Sichuan province
has been very supportive of some of the experiments that I have
been talking about. I know that the sorts of experiments that I
was talking about on consultative democracy in Zhejiang
Province have had the support of the political leadership at
higher levels.
So it is a certain combination of a willingness to be
entrepreneurial, to try things out, to say, ``Let us do
something,'' but also an ability to secure the recognition, the
approval at higher levels that, ``Look, if we do this, it will
solve this, this, and this problem, and will not create more
problems than it will solve.'' So, there is something of a
framework there.
I think China is an extremely big place, and almost no
statement is true of the whole place. So, yes, at the township
level I think you can find a lot of problems with political
leadership.
Most of the reforms I have been talking about are actually
supported at the city and county level, if not higher, and
implemented at the township level.
But I do think that you have a lot of pressure on, and
willingness from, lower level cadres to do things. They say,
``Boss, we are facing problems, we need to do something.'' So
there is a certain bottom-up pressure, and sometimes the higher
levels will support that, sometimes they do not. One of the
things I mention in my paper is that I think you see more
political reform in Wenling, whereas you see more ``civil
society'' in Wenzhou. Well, how do you explain this? Well,
Wenzhou is a very big, important, economically powerful city.
Just the term ``Wenzhou model'' is very evocative throughout
China. You start doing political reforms there, that is going
to set off some real tremors.
So I think--I do not know, but I think--that is one reason
why you see chambers of commerce and so forth restricted to
certain delineated roles, and you are not doing other types of
political reforms is because of the size and importance of a
city like Wenzhou. Whereas, if you take a smaller city like
Wenling and you say, ``If it does not work, nothing bad is
going to happen,'' then you can experiment more freely. So it
is a combination of local society, local leaders, and higher
level leaders.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you very much.
Mr. Xie, did you want to comment?
Mr. Xie. Yes. I just have one comment. I think, from the
central government, it does not really have a sense of
direction where to go, and whether or not it has the resources
to do it.
Also, China is so large and also so much centrally
controlled, if the provincial government has more room for its
own policies, I mean, political reform may be easier to start
at the local level.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you very much.
I would like to turn the questioning over to my colleague,
John Foarde, who is House Staff Director for Co-Chairman Jim
Leach.
John.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, too, to all three of
our panelists for coming this morning and sharing your
expertise with us. Our Commission members appreciate it, and we
on the staff appreciate it very much.
I, too, have two or three relatively short questions. I was
struck by a comment, Professor Goldman, in your statement that
the sense that this popular rights consciousness is really a
bottom-up phenomenon, it is bubbling up from the bottom. Yet at
the same time, as Mr. Xie was mentioning, we see a lot of top-
down orders coming down from the Party and down from the
central government.
I find it personally a little bit ironic that, in the
context of WTO implementation and compliance, the U.S.
Government has been looking to the central government in
Beijing to push compliance down from the central level to the
provincial, and then to the local.
So I guess what I am wondering, is what is the right mix,
in your view, of bottom up and top down, and is there a
potential for either stalemate or stagnation?
Ms. Goldman. I believe that the pressures that we had put
on China in what is now the defunct UN Commission on Human
Rights did have an impact, at least, in making China conform in
words, if not in deeds, to the human rights covenants. I was a
member of the U.S. delegation to the Commission during the
Clinton Administration, and saw the tremendous amount of energy
and money that the People's Republic put into ensuring that
they would not be denounced in the Commission.
Months before the meetings, Chinese officials spread out to
the non-Western countries with all kinds of gifts and largess
to ensure that those countries did not vote for resolutions of
the United States and few Western countries denouncing China's
human rights abuses. The idea of shaming another country
bothers me. But it was a factor in China's willingness
ultimately in signing the two UN covenants. China attempted to
play off the European countries against the United States, but
when the European Union was on our side in criticism of China's
human rights abuses, we had a much greater impact.
Unfortunately, China has been able to split some European
countries away from the United States on the human rights
issue.
True, one can say that China's signing of the UN covenants
on human rights was a pro-forma gesture that will not change
the behavior of its leadership. But China's acceptance of the
covenants does have an impact on the people who are trying to
assert their human rights because they can refer to the fact
that the People's Republic has signed onto these covenants as
the basis for their actions.
My experience as a member of the Carter Center group
monitoring China's grassroots elections provides an example of
how even village elections in model villages, visited by
foreign observers, cannot be completely controlled by the
Party. When we arrived at a village in Sichuan in 2001 to
monitor the village elections, the villagers were sitting in
the courtyard under a drizzling rain waiting for us to observe
their election of village head and representative to the
township people's council. Three people ran for village head,
the Party secretary, the treasurer, and the builder, an
entrepreneur. The nominees gave speeches of three minutes; the
questions and the answers were short; and then they voted. Not
surprisingly the Party secretary won. But then the villagers
were to vote for the representative to the township council.
The two nominees were the Party secretary and the treasurer.
All of a sudden, the backers of the builder stood up and
protested the nomination process. They declared that their
candidates should have been nominated as well. Immediately, our
official hosts dragged us away from the village, despite our
protests. The point of this story is to show that even though
the Party attempts to control the village elections, they
cannot completely. These elections are bringing unexpected
results and are energizing the local level. Whether these
elections will eventually lead to changes in the political
system, I do not know. But a process of political consciousness
and change is underway in China. Though it is difficult to know
where it will lead, as one can see in this example, democratic
procedures and political consciousness are taking hold even in
the Chinese countryside, which the Party cannot control.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you. Really useful.
A question for Professor Fewsmith. You were talking about
the chambers of commerce in Wenzhou city, which I thought was
fascinating. Do you know how they are organized legally, and do
they have to register with either the provincial government or
central government, and in what ways, as trade associations or
for-profit businesses? How do they do that?
Mr. Fewsmith. Well, there are nonprofit organizations. They
are NGOs. One of the things that distinguishes the chambers of
commerce in Wenzhou is that, to the best of my knowledge, all
of them raise their own funds. In other parts of China,
business associations are funded by the government, along with
the control that that implies. In Wenzhou, they are not. At
least some of them have very competitive elections for their
own chairmanship, and they do not even have government
officials on their board or their advisory board, although they
do have to have good personal relationships. They have to have
what is called a ``guakao danwei'' a supervisory organ that
they are attached to.
In the case of Wenzhou, that is either the Association for
Industry and Commerce or the Trade and Economics Commission, or
several other government bodies. Once, of course, that group
says, ``Yes, we will sponsor you,'' then they have to register
with the Civil Affairs Department.
One of the things which I think is really interesting is
that there has been this ``one industry, one association''
rule, which is a corporatist model. But it does not work very
well, for lots of reasons. Commerce changes all the time. New
lines are built up. Does this line of leisure clothing fit in
the association whose members make men's suits or not? What
about the association that is in the next town that is doing
something else?
There have been some informal associations that are not
strictly legal, but they have set up meetings, things of that
nature. As I understand it, some cities in China now are
beginning to have an experiment with not registering
associations. We will see if that happens, if that is
successful, and if it spreads.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you. Very useful.
Thank you, Dave.
Mr. Dorman. I would like to introduce the Commission's
General Counsel, William Farris.
William.
Mr. Farris. Thank you.
One of the areas I handle for the Commission is freedom of
expression. I would direct this at all of you. I am wondering,
how much freedom do intellectuals and citizens have to call for
political reform in China, and what channels are particularly
effective, what channels are particularly closed, and how do
you feel that this space to discuss political reform has either
gotten broader or narrower in the last year or so? Thank you.
Ms. Goldman. There is no question that China's political
system has moved from being totalitarian to what Minxin Pei
calls a system of ``soft authoritarianism.'' Consequently,
there is more freedom in people's personal lives and
professional lives and in business. In my personal
conversations with Chinese colleagues, they freely state their
views. It is when they express a critical or even alternative
view to that of the Party leadership in a public forum that the
Party cracks down. This present leadership of the fourth
generation of Party leaders, under Hu Jintao, is more
repressive and allows less space for public political discourse
than during the later years of Jiang Zemin.
This is not just my belief; it's the view of people I
interviewed when I was in China this past summer. The say that
they can talk relatively freely among trusted friends and
colleagues, but that in public they are much more guarded than
they were in the late 1990s, when they assert there was more
public space for open debate and expression of political views
than they have now.
Also in the late 1990s there was more ideological pluralism
than now. Publicly stated views then ranged from neo-Maoism and
neo-Confucianism to liberalism to the new left, and so forth.
However, even then, any effort to organize political groups
around these ideological views was repressed by detaining the
organizers, especially those who attempted to organize
unsanctioned political groups on the Internet. A group of
college students that attempted to do that on the Internet was
harshly repressed and its organizers given prison terms. There
is no question that there is a bubbling up of uncensored
political discourse from below, but the Party, through its
censors, filters, and Internet police is determined to stamp it
out. Whether or not they will succeed is a question.
An example of a political debate that the authorities had
trouble censoring occurred in a dispute over a newspaper weekly
supplement, Freezing Point, which is attached to the China
Youth Daily. When Freezing Point published an article that did
not fit the Party's political view of history, it was closed
down and its editors were purged. Unlike the silence that would
have followed such an action in the past, 13 high-level
establishment intellectuals and retired officials wrote a
public statement criticizing that closure.
Such a high-level public protest had not happened before in
the People's Republic. The intellectuals and ex-officials might
have protested privately and as single individuals, but not as
an organized group in a public statement. That, I think, is a
sign of the changes underway politically in China today.
Because the signers of the statement were important ex-
officials, the Party did not crack down on them. Though the
supplement was later reopened, its editors of the time of the
controversial article were ``retired.''
Mr. Fewsmith. I would like to add a few comments to that. I
think that we would all agree that personal expression that
takes place in a restaurant or at an academic conference has
dramatically improved over the last 10, 15, 20 years. That sort
of expression really, I think, is quite open. By the way, it is
also refreshing that I can go and talk to Chinese colleagues
about such sensitive issues as North Korea, Taiwan, U.S.
foreign policy, and have a real exchange of views. It is not
simply, ``I am going to read you what the government thinks
today,'' but rather a real give and take. That is something
that has developed quite a bit over the last few years.
I would agree with Professor Goldman that the last couple
of years we have seen a number of trends that are troubling,
the criticism of public intellectuals, for instance, that we
saw carried out.
There is a sense that the range of expression--and here I
mean public newspaper expression--has narrowed. It is not only
Freezing Point that was closed, but many other journals that
have been reorganized and/or closed. I am not quite ready to
say that the government under Hu Jintao is more repressive, or
whether this is just one of those periodic oscillations that we
have seen in the past. I am of the belief that the political
leadership situation is still fairly unsettled, and that you
will probably see another iteration, another turn of the wheel,
after the 17th Party Congress. Which way that will go, we will
just have to wait and see. Between Party Congresses is when
political tensions tend to be the highest. So in a couple of
years, maybe we will be able to say something more definitive
about which way things are going.
At the same time that there has been a squeezing of the
public expression in newspapers, there has been an expansion of
expression on the Internet--which has not gone unchallenged by
the government--and in blogs. It is fascinating that you can
get on the Internet and read all sorts of people's blogs and
get all sorts of expression, some of which are very much ``in-
your-face,'' if you will.
In any case, at the same time, what we have seen over the
last couple of years has been one of the more far-reaching
discussions on what direction the country should go on that we
have seen in the last 25 years. It has been compared to the
discussion that accompanied the early Dengist period on praxis
as the sole criterion of truth. There was obviously a vigorous
discussion right after Tiananmen about where the country should
go, and now there is another one.
The defenders of what might be broadly called neo-liberal
economic policy, and a lot that goes with that, versus those
who would take a much more populist tack and emphasize
redistribution of wealth and a greater involvement of
government entities at various levels, these are discussions
about fundamental government policies and what type of polity,
in the broad sense, they are going to develop.
These are not discussions about whether or not China should
have a democratic system or a socialist system, or those sorts
of discussions. But yet, the policy discussions are really very
critical, and they are central to the politics of China.
This has been carried out very publicly in newspapers and
on the Internet, in all sorts of discussions for the last two
years, so you can debate an awful lot of things. And, by the
way, I think one of the reasons you can have that, and are
having that, is that there is an opening at the top, that the
political leadership itself has not really decided where it
wants to go on these issues. When you have that sort of mix at
the top--maybe in Washington you should use the expression
``divided government''--the range of expression tends to be a
bit greater.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
I would like to pass the questioning now to Carl Minzner,
who is a Senior Counsel on the Commission. Also, Carl, as all
of our panelists know, went to great efforts to set up this
roundtable and did all the hard work necessary for pulling it
together. So, thanks, Carl, for that.
Mr. Minzner. Thank you.
And thanks to everyone for coming. Thanks, particularly to
our panelists, for enlightening us here this morning on the
important issues before us.
I have a question that I will direct to Professor Fewsmith
and Mr. Xie, which is that Chinese local governments,
particularly in rural China, are frequently characterized by a
monopoly of power in the hands of the local Party secretary. He
may control the government, the courts, and the entire local
Party organization. This unchecked power gives rise to a range
of abuses and corruption.
How can partial reform efforts that are supposed to take
place under his supervision successfully address these
problems? At some point, even if you are just interested in
improving governance, don't you have to start addressing issues
of external constraints and popular constraints on the power of
the local Party secretary?
Mr. Fewsmith. That is a good question, and a difficult one
to address, certainly; in the breadth and depth of China there
are many different things happening.
I think that the problem that you point to is a very real
one. It is a very widespread one, and it is one of the things
that, as I said in my opening statement, is motivating the
sorts of changes that I have been looking at.
Recently I have been reading about something known as the
``yizhi sanhua''--one mechanism-three transformation--system
that has been implemented in parts of Hebei province. It came
very specifically out of the village elections for village
chief in the early part of this century, in the 2002-2003
period, where the village chief claimed legitimacy on the basis
of the elections and basically said, ``I represent the village.
Who do you--the Party secretary--represent? '' There were these
sorts of conflicts. This is a fairly poor area, and there were
a lot of these sorts of conflicts.
The bottom line is that the way that this was ultimately
addressed is, first of all, the Party came down and said,
``Well, the Party secretary really is the boss.'' On the other
hand, no decisions can be made without a joint meeting of the
Party committee and the village committee, and you will jointly
decide these things, like putting everybody in the room
together and saying, ``Do not come out until you have an
agreement.''
At the same time, they also removed a lot of the financial
flexibility from the village government, so the township has a
special account for the village and monies are paid to the
township. This raises some questions about township governance,
but at least it removes it immediately from the village.
How widespread are these sorts of mechanisms? More
widespread than they used to be. This is one of the sorts of
quiet things that are beginning to happen. I do not want to say
how widespread these sorts of things are. But this is what I
mean by sort of an alliance of higher Party people and the
local populace, which both of them have an interest in
constraining the abuse of power at the local level.
Mr. Xie. In terms of the township Party secretary, at the
current time I think it is quite difficult to monitor. Because,
for example, in one program we did earlier in which we wanted
to assess the performance of the township government employees,
the Party secretary of the township was supportive on the
condition that he was not assessed. I mean, he was supportive
of the program, so any government employee could be assessed,
except him.
In other words, because the whole Chinese structure makes
the officials only responsible to their superiors rather than
to the local people. I mean, that is the general problem,
because they were appointed by the Party branch committee and
they were elected by the Party members. That is why we hope
that our programs could find some solutions that could mobilize
the farmers to protect their rights and supervise the
government. If that is successful--it may take a long time--it
may help in some ways to provide some support.
Ms. Goldman. What impressed me when I was an observer of
the village elections was that despite the fact that the Party
still controlled the election procedures, the elections were
inculcating democratic values. For example, when I asked people
what they thought of the process of village elections, one old
farmer, pointing his finger, said, ``You see that guy? I just
elected him. But if he does not do what I want, I can elect
somebody else in three years.'' So, despite the fact that the
Party still controls the village election process, I think
village elections are engendering a sense of accountability at
the very bottom of society.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
I would like to pass the questioning now to Commission
Senior Counsel, Pamela Phan.
Pam.
Ms. Phan. Thank you, Dave. I would like to also echo the
Commission's thanks to everyone, and particularly the
panelists, for coming out today.
One issue of concern to the Commission has been the Chinese
Government's respect for private citizens' property rights,
especially since the 2004 amendments to the Constitution. We
have seen quite a bit of reporting over the past year about
villagers who are angry over issues of corruption and over
government takings of their farmland. These issues have existed
for a while, and we have had conversations with various Chinese
experts about the mechanisms that are available to citizens for
enforcement of property rights.
I am curious about what your thoughts are on the
effectiveness of more traditional mechanisms such as xinfang--
petitioning--or administrative litigation, or recall campaigns,
and also what you think about the effectiveness of potential
new mechanisms, such as the deliberative democracy efforts that
people have been talking about, or homeowners' associations?
Ms. Goldman. We have thought that there was going to be an
introduction of some kind of stipulation on property rights at
the National People's Congress meeting in March 2006, but that
stipulation was apparently blocked by the opposition of a
leftist economist, among others.
A post-doctoral fellow at the Fairbank Center at Harvard
this year, Chen Xi, has written a book about the practice of
petitioning. He believes that petitioning is important because
it draws the Party's attention to problems. However, as another
Chinese academic has pointed out, less than 3 percent of the
people who petition the government get any kind of redress.
Petitioning is a form of protest that has produced few results.
Furthermore, Hu Jintao has ordered local level governments
to deal with petitions so that petitioners will not go to
Beijing and cause disruption. Usually petitioners who go to
Beijing are handled very roughly and sent back to their local
areas. Petitioning is the traditional way of protest and
expressing discontent, but it has not proved very effective.
With respect to the Administration Litigation Law, I
believe that a few years ago we estimated that about one-third
of the people who use the law get some kind of redress in
bringing suit against what they consider to be corrupt local
government officials. But they cannot bring suit against high-
level Party officials. So there are really limits on what this
law can do.
If it were possible to get a stipulation in the Party
constitution recognizing private property rights, then at least
there would be a law that people can point to as the basis for
demanding their property rights.
The Xi'an peasants whom I described were really furious
because their land had been taken away for little compensation,
but they had no recourse other than holding up posters to
protest their treatment. This method is still the traditional
way of seeking redress. There are still no institutionalized
channels through which one can express one's discontent and
demand recompense.
One change, however, that I talked about earlier in a
different context, is the willingness of intellectuals, such as
lawyers, to help farmers find legal means to demand some kind
of redress. That new phenomenon is similar to the actions of
intellectuals joining with other classes--workers, small
entrepreneurs, and farmers--in political actions. Another new
phenomenon that appeared in the late 1990s is the emergence of
defense lawyers, who have been very brave in defending people
charged with political crimes. So this is another grassroots
change that is occurring in the People's Republic in the early
years of the 21st century.
Mr. Fewsmith. Of course, the whole issue of property
rights, as you know, was before the National People's Congress
this last March, and they delayed the vote on that. That debate
was absolutely central to the debate that I was talking about
before about ``Where are you going? '' Of course, the proposed
law protected private property and it was attacked for
undermining socialism. So, that debate is going to be an
ongoing one, and we will have to see where they balance those
different concerns.
It is a very sensitive issue. The government, at all
levels, is worried about this because the struggle over
property rights is, indeed, one of the major causes for social
disruption at the local level. All too frequently, a local
government will be collusive with a property developer, and all
of a sudden the peasants' land is gone. The peasants get
compensation, but they often regard it as inadequate.
This, of course, raises a question of, what is adequate
compensation? Without a well-developed land market, how do you
know what the land is really worth? Then, of course, the
peasant is looking and saying, ``But I do not have a job. These
are tight times. I cannot go back and farm.'' You do not make
money as a farmer, but you can at least survive.
There was, of course, the very interesting case up in
Dingzhou in Hebei, where I am sure you saw the film of that, a
really atrocious example of thugs coming in with vicious
weapons. The thugs did, in fact, kill some people and maim
others. But somebody caught it on a home camcorder. You will
recall, I think it was Zhongguo Jingji Shibao--China Economic
Times--ran a very long investigative report on that incident,
and at least in that instance, some justice was done, in that
the local Party secretary was sentenced to life in jail.
So you can kind of see the government struggling to find a
balance point. In the Dingzhou case, they clearly took action
to redress the injustice. In the Taishi case in Guangdong
Province, they have not. So governments are wrestling with this
issue, and it is going to be one of the most contentious and
important debates over the next several years, I think.
Mr. Xie. Just one more comment. I think, at least in terms
of private properties, it should be the farmers themselves who
protect themselves. Whoever else, the government officials, the
lawyers, the educated elite, may not provide enough protection.
Eventually, fundamentally, farmers themselves have to find ways
to collectively protect their own property rights.
Petitions or claims assistance will not help much. If
something can help, that is the future when our judicial system
is further reformed, and this may help in some way. But the
farmers themselves have to take the initiative.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
Next, I would like to recognize Commission Counsel Kara
Abramson.
Kara.
Ms. Abramson. Yes. I have a question for Professor Goldman.
I was wondering if the changes that you have described are more
prevalent in some parts of China than in others. How do places
like Xinjiang and Tibet, or Guangxi and Yunnan, fit into this
picture?
Ms. Goldman. The China Democracy Party, as I said, started
in Hangzhou, then spread to Wuhan and the coastal areas and
then inland. It did not spread to the minority areas of
Xinjiang and Tibet. The Party's unwillingness to negotiate on
ethnic and religious issues in those areas is more intractable
than its handling of the bubbling up of some kind of democracy
elsewhere in China.
I was in Xinjiang this past summer; I had never been there
before. I first went to Urumqi, which has now become a Han
city. A similar kind of migration of Han into Tibet is
underway. I suspect that the Han migration will in time make
the Han the dominant ethnic group in both Xinjiang and Tibet.
However, when we left Urumqi and went, for example, to Kashgar,
one knew immediately it was a Uighur city; women were wearing
veils. I was told that a few years ago they were not wearing
veils in Kashgar.
This is just an observation; I have not studied this issue
in any depth. But it appeared that the situation in Xinjiang
was becoming more polarized than it had been before. At least,
that was the way it was described to me. But the problem in
Xinjiang and Tibet is more of an ethnic conflict than a
political conflict.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
I would like to ask all of you to help the Commission
identify trends in China, never an easy task.
Professor Goldman, you mentioned that under the current
government, the room for certain rights had narrowed,
specifically public expression on sensitive topics. You also
described a bubbling rights consciousness among merchants, and
disenfranchised intellectuals speaking out.
To what extent are these two trends reactions to each
other? Is the government reacting to the new rights
consciousness? Are these individuals speaking out against the
narrowing of freedoms? How has this evolved in the last couple
of years?
Ms. Goldman. Despite constriction of public space for
political discourse under Hu Jintao, there is a broadening of
political discourse beyond intellectuals to other classes, as I
mentioned earlier. There is also more openness to the outside
world.
That is why I believe that something is happening in the
People's Republic that is unprecedented. As I said earlier,
contact between intellectuals and other classes may have
something to do with the experience of the Cultural Revolution,
when students were sent to the countryside, prison, and labor
reform. Those experiences put them in contact with other
classes of people that they did not have before. Thus, there
has been a qualitative change. These multi-class political
actions may prove more effective than the efforts of
intellectuals to bring about political change on their own.
Frankly, a market economy provides many more opportunities
for political actions than a planned economy. Under Mao, if one
were purged or released from prison, there was no way one could
make a living. Today, there is life after being purged or
imprisoned for political reasons. Many of the people in the
China Democracy Party, who had been imprisoned for their
participation in the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, once
released, were able to open up their own small software stores.
They were not making much money, but they were able to support
themselves and establish
contact with the outside world and with their former fellow
demonstrators. They continued their interest in participating
in politics. Similarly, students who go abroad to study often
continue their interests in politics. I recently received an e-
mail from one of my former students who talked about democracy
and political rights, despite the censorship and filtering of
China's Internet.
Mr. Fewsmith. I certainly concur with Professor Goldman
that the dynamic has changed dramatically over the last 10 or
15 years. But whether cautiously optimistic or cautiously
pessimistic, I am always within a fairly narrow range.
In any case, the scope of discussion of a variety of sorts
is just much larger than it used to be. As Professor Goldman
said, in the 1980s it was confined to a fairly small,
intellectual elite. That dynamic has changed fundamentally. Now
you are talking about citizen involvement.
As I say, you are talking about the Party itself asking,
``So how do we reform? How do we do things? '' They are not
interested, of course, in introducing Western-style democracy.
They want to reform in ways that will keep the Chinese
Communist Party in power. But if they are successful in doing
that, it will not be your father's Communist Party, it will be
something that is new and at least provides, I would like to
think, some better governance.
One of the reasons I am interested in what I have been
doing the last couple of years is that I am trying to look at
the creation of institutions at the local level, because no
matter which way the Chinese Communist Party goes, if you do
not create those institutions, you do not get better
governance.
If the Party were to collapse, the social upheaval would
likely be tremendous. This is the downside risk; it would not
be very pretty. If you can build some of these institutions,
then you can get much more societal consensus about how
politics should work, be organized, and so forth.
That, I think, is the thing that might eventually bubble up
from the bottom. And it does have to go from the bottom to the
top. The top has to say, ``All right, guys, you can try this''
and then they can monitor this sort of thing, but the impetus
for change I think really has to come from the bottom up.
I will make two additional points. One, I cannot hazard
statistics on how many different experiments there are now as
compared to 10 years ago, but I guarantee you that it is
exponentially greater. They still may not be on the scale or
the depth that I think we would all like to see, but if you go
back to, say, 1995, and compare, then it is apparent that we
are in a different ballpark now. This is going to continue.
My guess, as I said before, is that after the 17th Party
Congress, after that arena is settled, that you are probably
going to see firmer direction and, I hope, some more rapid
progress, supporting at least some sorts of reform at the local
level in that period.
Mr. Dorman. Mr. Xie, did you want to respond?
Mr. Xie. Yes. From my experience, I would like to make
three points. One, is that in our programs we do not just
simply do surveys, we want action. We want to do reforms. We
want our grantees to use our experiments to generate policy
suggestions. In that case, you need to have support from the
local officials. You have to be careful where you go for those
programs, but we do find them supportive when we do programs.
So, I think it really depends on where you go and what you do
when you talk about political
reform.
The second point is that I think years ago the Chinese
scholars, or maybe the officials, were not quite sure what they
should do. In that sense, there was more room for discussion
where you could be discussing things that are entirely
different from the government ideas. Now I think the ideas are
pretty much set. The government would have its own idea of what
it should do, what kind of reform it should expect. Once you
talk about things that are different from the government ideas,
they tend to be probably repressive. But once you are talking
about one that is not so radical, maybe you can talk about it.
I probably should discuss the third point at a different
roundtable.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you very much.
Unfortunately, we are two minutes over. Could I ask each of
you to stay just for two more minutes for one more question? We
generally try not to keep our panelists or witnesses any longer
than 90 minutes.
Mr. Minzner. It is a good question.
Mr. Dorman. All of Carl's questions are good. He will only
ask 1 of the 31 questions I see he has written down, though.
Mr. Minzner. I will just pick one. I will pick a broad
question to end on. I want to pick up on something Merle had
mentioned, and particularly make sure that I get Professor
Fewsmith's input as well.
Taiwan and South Korea successfully transitioned from
authoritarianism to democracy during the 1970s and 1980s. How
do the current efforts by the Chinese political leaders that
you have been discussing with regard to political change, and
that Professor Goldman has been talking about with regard to
popular political participation, compare to similar periods
early on in the South Korean or Taiwan political transition
period, say in the late 1970s, early 1980s?
Mr. Dorman. My apologies.
Ms. Goldman. The post-Confucian countries of South Korea
and Japan were among the first non-Western countries to become
democratic. This also happened in Taiwan. I believe that part
of the reason for this interest in democracy has to do with
Confucianism. I cannot say Confucianism necessarily lends
itself to democracy, but it certainly does not hinder it.
Again, referring to one of my students, he described having
dinner in his family. He said there were four grandparents, two
parents, and himself. He said ``What do they talk about? My
education, education, education, and hard work.'' He said
``They are so Confucian.'' But this emphasis on education has
made for social mobility in Chinese society.
Also, there is the concept in Confucianism of the
responsibility to speak out against an abusive leader or
official and protest against unfair treatment. I know these are
the ideals, but they still exist in China today.
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, however, made their
transition under a certain degree of American tutelage, so I am
not sure their transformation is replicable in China. Despite
Mao's efforts to root out Confucianism, the Confucian value
system still exists in China today. Nevertheless, it will take
much longer in China than in the post-Confucian Asian
countries, or than in Taiwan, to move in a democratic
direction. As I said in my recent book, the elements for
political reform are there and bubbling up from below.
Mr. Fewsmith. You did want the two-hour response, did you
not? [Laughter.] It is obviously a complicated question. I went
to Taiwan as a student in 1974. One of the things that is
really gratifying about Taiwan is the extent of change. When I
was there as a student way back when, there was a military
police officer on every corner in a nice, shiny helmet. The
military presence was stronger there than you see in Beijing or
other Chinese cities today. Yet, it transformed itself, and it
is quite gratifying to see that.
But, of course, you had a very special situation in Taiwan,
where you had political power being held by a sub-ethnic
minority of about 10 percent or so of the population, and the
rest of the population feeling oppressed by that. That ethnic
tension, of which we see more than a few shades to this day,
was something that, in fact, benefited this transition. There
was no way that the government was going to be able to maintain
that political monopoly
unless they became extraordinarily repressive. Fortunately,
that government was not willing to do that. Perhaps the open
economy, the relationship with the United States--they probably
had more Ph.Ds in their government than we have in our
government. The Kuomintang, for all its authoritarianism and
its Leninist form, really was not a Leninist party. It gave up
its Leninism about 1930. That is my first point.
In any case, the Korean situation is much more of a story
of a burgeoning middle class, and there are also some regional
tensions, as we all know, from the Kuangju uprising and so
forth.
One of the things that Mao really did was to carry out a
sort of clear-cutting of Chinese culture. It was a cultural
cataclysm. Confucianism was destroyed, at least for a period of
time. Social structures were destroyed. As China emerged from
that nightmare, there was no consensus on what cultures should
be, what the values of society are, what sorts of people should
be promoted to what sorts of positions, how they should be
promoted, all these sorts of fundamental human questions. I
think China has now spent 25 years slowly reconstructing itself
as a society, and it is going to take China another 25 years to
get, I think, to a certain sort of basic societal consensus and
overcome that really devastating cultural and societal impact
of the Maoist experiment.
Ms. Goldman. I am going to counter Joe on one point. My
first trip to China was in 1974. I was the China expert who
accompanied the delegation of American university presidents.
What really impressed me on this first trip was that, despite
the Cultural Revolution still underway, was how much of the
Confucian value system still remained. No matter how hard Mao
tried to destroy it, he could not get rid of the Confucian
respect for the elders and for education. So I would like to
conclude that the Confucian values are still important in China
and, in time, will help China move in the democratic direction
of its post-Confucian neighbors.
Mr. Fewsmith. By way of clarification, I do not think that
I said that they are not there or important. There is not a
consensus on their role in society, as opposed to a personality
type, certainly the value of education. They are good on that.
That is something that we should study from China.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you very much.
Unfortunately, I feel like our conversation has just begun.
Mr. Xie, would you like to add a final point?
Mr. Xie. No.
Mr. Dorman. We are 10 minutes over our time limit, and I
apologize to our panelists and our audience.
Professor Merle Goldman, Professor Joseph Fewsmith, Mr. Xie
Gang, thank you, on behalf of our Chairman, Co-Chairman, and
Commissioners, for sharing your expertise, your knowledge, your
wisdom on these extraordinarily complex and important issues.
So, thank you again.
With that, I will call the roundtable to a close. Thank
you.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m. the roundtable was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Merle Goldman
may 15, 2006
Grassroots Political Changes
The conventional view of post-Mao Zedong China is that it has had
extraordinary economic changes, but few political changes. The World
Bank has called China's rate of economic growth of 9-10 percent a year
for the last 20 years not only the fastest in the world today, but in
world history. Yet, while China has moved to a market economy, it
continues to be ruled by an authoritarian Leninist party-state.
Nevertheless, China's political system has also experienced some
changes, though not on the scale of what is happening in the Chinese
economy. In the late 1980s, villagers began holding multi-candidate
elections for village heads and village councils that during the early
years of the 21st century spread to 90 percent of China's villages.
Multi-candidate elections are also held for local people's councils and
neighborhood committees in the cities. A few townships have
experimented with multi-candidate elections for township heads. In
addition, thousands of NGOs were established, but had to be registered
under the auspices of a government organization and registered with the
Ministry of Civil Affairs. Moreover, complying with Deng Xiaoping's
dictum that the head of the Party cannot serve more than two five-year
terms, China introduced term limits for the leadership of the Chinese
Communist Party. Thus, the transition from the party leadership of
Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002-2003 was the smoothest transition in
Chinese Communist history. All of these political reforms, however,
were sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party in order to maintain
stability and to regain the party's legitimacy after the chaos of Mao's
Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
Other political changes have occurred in the post-Mao era without
the consent of the party. My new book ``From Comrade to Citizen: The
Struggle for Political Rights in China'' focuses on the emergence of
various individuals and groups who have sought to assert their
political rights in the post-Mao era without party sanction. A
``comrade'' during the Mao era was one who did whatever the party
ordered him to do. Therefore, when intellectuals and others criticized
the party during the Hundred Flowers period in 1956 and the first half
of 1957, they did so because Mao had ordered them to rid the party of
its bureaucratic ways. Similarly, in the Cultural Revolution Mao
ordered China's youth to attack the party's leaders whom Mao believed
were plotting against him. They were acting as ``comrades'' in carrying
out the orders of the party leader.
assertion of political rights in the post-mao era
When individuals and groups began to criticize the party's policies
and called for political reforms soon after Mao's death in 1976, they
were acting as citizens because unlike in the Mao era, they were doing
so of their own volition and were attempting to assert their right to
participate in politics.
With China's move to the market and opening up to the outside world
in the 1980s and 1990s, the post-Mao leadership relaxed the party's
controls over everyday life. This loosening-up led not only to a
dynamic economy and the emergence of ideological diversity--neo-
Maoists, neo-Confucians, liberals, conservatives and the new left--it
also led to a growing sense of rights consciousness, particularly of
political rights, as various individuals and groups attempted to assert
their right to speak out and organize on a variety of issues without
the party's permission. Some of those asserting their political rights
were influenced by East European and Soviet dissidents in the late
1970s and 1980s who attributed their actions to their own
constitutions. Similarly, the Chinese individuals and groups called for
political rights based on the stipulation of freedom of speech and
association in Article 35 in China's Constitution.
The demands for political reforms were initially articulated and
acted upon by two groups of intellectuals. One group was the
``establishment intellectuals'' who
returned from exile in the countryside or prison after Mao's death and
staffed the party's research institutes, national media, official
commissions and professional organizations. They became members of the
intellectual networks of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, the party leaders
in the 1980s. When their political patrons--Hu in 1986 and Zhao in the
aftermath of the military crackdown on the Tiananmen demonstrators on
the June 4, 1989--were purged so were these establishment intellectuals
for calling for political reforms. I describe these establishment
intellectuals in my previous book ``Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in
China.''
``From Comrade to Citizen'' focuses on the ``disestablished
intellectuals.'' These were people who would have been in the
establishment but for the fact that their activities as Red Guards in
the Cultural Revolution and as leaders of the 1989 student
demonstrations led to their removal from the establishment. When in the
Cultural Revolution, Mao mobilized college students, called Red Guards,
to rebel against the party, their teachers and families, they caused
chaos. Mao then ordered them to go to the countryside to learn from the
peasants. There, far away from family, school and authority, they began
to think on their own, question the party and form their own discussion
groups. The impact of Mao's policies on the Cultural Revolution
generation was contradictory. On the one hand, they were deprived of an
education; on the other, they were taught to question authority.
Thus, soon after they returned to the cities after Mao's death in
1976, they launched the Democracy Wall movement of late 1978-79 in
which they not only challenged party policies, they even called for
political reforms in order to prevent the excesses of the Cultural
Revolution. They used the methods they had learned in the Cultural
Revolution--forming groups, putting up wall posters, publishing
pamphlets and engaging in public debates. Initially Deng allowed them
to continue their movement because it helped remove Maoists from power,
but once that was done, Deng then repressed the movement and imprisoned
their leaders in 1980.
The other group to assert their rights in the post-Mao era was the
leaders of the 1989 demonstrations, who among other demands, also
called for political reforms. Though they too were imprisoned after the
June 4 crackdown, they as well as the leaders of Democracy Wall
movement were released from prison in the mid 1990s in order for China
to get the Olympics in the year 2008. Their release reveals that
Western pressure on human rights issues can have an impact on political
events in China. Whereas Mao did not care what the outside world
thought of him or China, the post-Mao leadership responds to outside
pressure because they want to be recognized and accepted by the outside
world and to be seen as playing by the rules of the international
community.
Unlike in the Mao era, China's move to the market made it possible
for these disestablished intellectuals and released political prisoners
to support themselves as small business people or workers. They also
led demonstrations, organized petitions, and formed political groups
during the 1990s. Also with the privatization of publishing in the
post-Mao era, they were able to present views that diverged from the
party's by publishing books and articles outside party auspices and
having their books distributed by private booksellers.
Equally important, in the post-Mao era, intellectuals, particularly
the disestablished intellectuals, for the first time were willing to
join with ordinary workers in political actions. Although during the
1989 Tiananmen demonstrations, the students isolated the workers who
wished to participate in the demonstrations because they knew of the
party's fear of a Chinese Solidarity movement, afterwards when they
were thrown out of the establishment, they were willing to join with
workers, farmers and ordinary citizens in political actions. An example
of this alliance can be seen in the attempt in 1998 to establish the
China Democracy Party, CDP, the first effort in the People's Republic
to form an opposition party. The leaders of the CDP came from Cultural
Revolution and 1989 generations and were joined by a small number of
small entrepreneurs, workers, and farmers.
Their strategy was to establish the CDP as local NGOs by
registering with the local offices of the Ministry of Civil Affairs,
which was the ministry in charge of NGOs. This effort began in
Hangzhou, led by veterans of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. It
spread to the east coast and then inland to Hunan and Sichuan. A
regional CDP was established in China's Northeast by veterans of the
Cultural Revolution. Their movement was coordinated and assisted by the
new communications technologies--the Internet and cell phones--
introduced into China in the mid 1990s. Despite the censorship and
filters, these technologies made it possible to organize on a regional
and national scale before the party crackdown. In addition, in another
indication of the impact of outside influence on events in China, the
founders of the CDP timed their efforts to a series of visits of
important foreign leaders to China in the second half of 1998,
beginning with President Clinton in June 1998, followed by British
Prime Minister, the UN Commissioner on Human Rights and the French
president. At the end of these visits in late 1998 and early 1999, the
party arrested the leaders of the CDP.
Despite the repeated suppression of the grassroots efforts of the
disestablished intellectuals to assert their political rights, by the
beginning of the 21st century, increasing consciousness and
articulation of political rights as well as of economic rights was
spreading to the population in general--workers, peasants, a growing
middle class, and religious believers. Peasants, thrown off their land
to make way for factories and infrastructure projects, demanded more
compensation; ordinary citizens called for the right to clean water and
clean air; and workers who lost their jobs in state industries demanded
health care and pensions. Kevin O'Brien, political scientist at
Berkeley, has pointed out that peasants exert their rights by their
actions. But, by the early 21st century they are asserting their rights
with words as well. I myself witnessed a protest of farmers in 2003 on
the outskirts of Xi'an at the entrance of the Big Goose Pagoda, where
peasants held up posters demanding their right to more compensation for
the land that had been taken away from them for modernization projects.
The perennial distinction in Chinese history between the
intellectuals and the rest of the population has become blurred since
the mid-1990s as intellectuals joined with other classes to bring about
political change and as other groups in the population demand political
rights. Unlike the Western bourgeoisie, China's rising middle class is
not independent of the political leadership. China's most successful
business people are being inducting into the party. In fact, their
ability to be successful in business depends on their connections with
the party. Therefore, the major participants in these efforts for
political reforms are not the newly rich business people, but other
members of the rising middle class--the disestablished intellectuals,
journalists, a number of defense lawyers, and small business people.
Grassroots assertions of political rights do not necessarily
guarantee movement toward democracy, but they are prerequisites for the
establishment of democratic institutions. There can be citizenship
without democracy, but there cannot be democracy without citizen
participation. These various and accelerating grassroots efforts of
various groups and individuals to assert political rights signify the
beginnings of genuine change in the relationship between China's
population and Chinese Communist Party at the start of the 21st
century.
______
Prepared Statement of Joseph Fewsmith
may 15, 2006
Feedback Without Pushback? Innovations in Local Governance
Over the last several years, China has begun to introduce a number
of reforms into local governance in an effort to allay local
discontent, to respond to growing demands for greater participation in
politics, and to better monitor local agents of the state. Although
limited elections have been introduced into the Chinese Communist
Party, the main thrust of these reforms seems to be gain the sort of
input that elections normally provide but without introducing electoral
democracy, or, to use Rick Baum's felicitous phrase, to get ``feedback
without pushback.'' \1\ The purpose of this short paper is to discuss
some of the innovations that have been introduced in recent years in
local governance and give some preliminary evaluation of their
effectiveness, recognizing both that such reforms are still in their
early stages and that my own research is on-going.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Richard Baum used this phrase in making comments at the
Association for Asian Studies meeting in San Francisco, April 7, 2006.
I borrow his phrase with permission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In general terms, the sorts of reforms the CCP has been introducing
fall into two broad categories, those that adjust the party's relations
with society and those that introduce limited competition and
supervision into the party itself. As will be pointed out below, there
is some overlap between these two categories, but conceptually, and to
a large extent in practice, they seem to be separate at the moment.
Both respond to emerging societal pressures, and both aim at such goals
as better governance and greater supervision. Neither aims to do away
with the party; rather the intent is to improve party responsiveness
both to reduce societal discontent (``pushback'') and to preserve the
party's ruling position.\2\ To the extent that such adjustments are
effective, both hardline Marxists who resist such innovations and those
who hope for a rapid transition to democracy are likely to be
disappointed. It might be added that if such reforms are ineffective,
the alternatives might be even worse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Several parts of this statement draw heavily on my articles
``Taizhou Area Explores Ways to Improve Local Governance'' and
``Chambers of Commerce in Wenzhou and the Potential, Limits of `Civil
Society' in China'' in China Leadership Monitor, issues 15 and 16,
summer 2005 and fall 2005, respectively, available at
www.chinaleadershipmonitor.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
adjusting relations between the party/state and society
Chinese society has changed dramatically over the past two and a
half decades; society is far more dynamic, wealthier (though unequally
so), better educated, more independent of the party/state, and
pluralistic. Such trends, as many accounts attest, have generated
demands for public participation in governance. Some of these demands
are broadly spread across the body politic, while others are limited to
specific sectors, such as the business community. As is well known,
much of China's economic development in recent years has depended on
the growth of a vigorous private economy, and government, especially at
the local level, has to take the needs of this sector into account when
thinking about public policy.
Chambers of Commerce. One way to do so is to allow, or even
encourage, the development of NGOs. Much attention has been paid of
late, in both China and elsewhere, to the role of NGOs in the various
``color'' revolutions that have brought down governments in the
Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere. But while NGOs can bring demands for
political change, they are also a necessary part of the evolving state-
society relationship in China. From the perspective of the government,
NGOs can provide essential information that can promote better public
policy. Also, if part of the objective of government reform is to
``change the function'' of government departments so that they provide
more service and less control, then NGOs can pick up some of the slack,
providing societal networks that can organize and coordinate societal
activities as the state takes up a narrower range of activities.
One area in which one can see visible change taking place--at least
in some places--is in the emergence of chambers of commerce (shanghui)
and trade associations (hangye xiehui). In much of China, chambers of
commerce still have a very strong government imprint. After studying
Yantai, the fourth largest city in Shandong province, Kenneth Foster
concluded that business associations there are ``highly integrated into
the bureaucracy, while at the same time being relatively ineffective
organizations.'' \3\ This statement is probably applicable to much of
the north China plain. The problem is two-fold. First, in many places,
as government departments were reorganized into associations overseeing
privatized industry, the officials running those associations tended to
be the same officials who had previously overseen the industry.
Hierarchical patterns of authority have tended to continue. Second,
many government departments are simply unwilling to turn their
functions over to business associations for fear of diminishing their
own importance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Kenneth W. Foster, ``Embedded within State Agencies: Business
Associations in Yantai,'' in The China Journal, no. 47 (January 2002),
p. 65.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This pattern sometimes leads to strange results. For instance, in
Tianjin, the northern port city near Beijing, the Tianjin Apparel
Chamber of Commerce (Tianjin fuzhuang shanghui) was established in 1998
as a second tier organization (erji zuzhi) under the Tianjin Chamber of
Commerce (which, as in other places, is the Association of Industry and
Commerce [gongshanglian], the united front organization initially
established in 1953 and later revived in the reform era). It has a
chairman, 12 vice chairmen, and four employees. But it does not have
independent legal standing. In Tianjin, there are few, if any, state-
owned enterprises (SOEs) left in the apparel industry, so the Apparel
Chamber of Commerce is really the only association that can represent
the apparel industry in the city. The problem is that there is a pre-
existing Tianjin Textile and Apparel Association (Tianjin fangzhi
fuzhuang xiehui) that was set up out of the government bureau that
originally oversaw the industry. So this association is a semi-official
organization, much like the business associations in Yantai that
Kenneth Foster describes. Because it is semi-official and not very
effective, enterprises tend not to trust it. But under the rule that
there can be only one association per industry, the more effective
Apparel Chamber of Commerce cannot be registered. Fundamentally, the
local Civil Affairs Bureau does not want to offend the Textile and
Apparel Association, so the more effective, bottom up organization is
left largely crippled and in legal limbo.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Gao Xinjun, ``Woguo hangye shanghui de falu huanjing yanjiu--
dui Tianjin shanghui de diaocha'' (The legal environment of China's
business associations--an investigation of Tianjin's chambers of
commerce), paper presented at the Conference on Improving the
Governance of Non-Official Chambers of Commerce, Wuxi, August 19-21,
2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ironically, there is a Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce in Tianjin that
has had fewer problems getting established and promoting the interests
of its members than the Tianjin Apparel Chamber of Commerce. The
Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce represents all the diverse interests of its
members, so it (like its corresponding chambers of commerce in other
cities of China) has not been forced to adhere to a ``one association,
one industry'' rule. It is attached to the Wenzhou Office in Tianjin
(Wenzhou shi zhu jin banshichu) and supervised by the Tianjin Office of
Economic Cooperation (Tianjin shi jingji xiezuo bangongshi), so it has
independent legal standing--the only non-official chamber of commerce
approved by the Tianjin Civil Affairs Bureau. This suggests some
loosening in the rules governing business associations in Tianjin, but
it is likely to be a long time before there is major change.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Wenzhou itself, however, business associations play a
considerably larger role. Wenzhou, in southern Zhejiang province, has
become famous for its promotion of private enterprise--and for its
rapid economic development. But in the 1980s, as Wenzhou merchants
began selling goods throughout China, they developed a reputation for
turning out shoddy and counterfeit goods, undercutting not only other
Chinese producers but also their fellow Wenzhou-ese. In 1987 both the
city and its business community were shocked when angry residents of
Hangzhou, the provincial capital, burned some 5,000 shoes in protest of
their poor quality.
It was precisely this incident that stimulated the formation of
chambers of commerce in Wenzhou. The first chamber was the Lucheng
District Shoe and Leather Industry Association (Lucheng xiege hangye
xiehui), established in 1988 (and later renamed the Wenzhou Shoe and
Leather Industry Association). The organizers of this association,
despite the extensive history of business associations in Wenzhou, had
little knowledge of previous business groups and less knowledge of how
to proceed in contemporary China. They went to the Association of
Industry and Commerce. A meeting of the Central Secretariat in December
1987 had decided that the Association of Industry and Commerce would be
renamed chambers of commerce (or general chambers of commerce) for
external purposes (the Association of Industry and Commerce continued
to exist as United Front organs under party and government control).
This action recognized the importance of the Association of Industry
and Commerce in guiding the development of private enterprise. In the
case of Wenzhou, it was the Association of Industry and Commerce that
harbored both the historical consciousness and the knowledge of the
contemporary period, and thus it was the Association of Industry and
Commerce that helped set up this first business association in 1988.
The new association cooperated closely with government to address
the problems confronting the industry. The government, in collaboration
with the association, drew up the ``Management Regulations on the
Rectification Quality of the Lucheng District Shoe and Leather
Industry'' and the ``Provisional Regulations on After Sales Service of
the Shoe and Leather Industry.'' Such measures, enforced through the
association, gave new life to the industry.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Chen Shengyong, Wang Jinjun, and Ma Bin, Zuzhihua, zizhu zhili
yu minzhu (Organized, self governance and democracy) (Beijing: Zhongguo
shehui kexue chubanshe, 2004), p. 38.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other associations began to organize, but this progress was soon
interrupted by Tiananmen and the political uncertainty that followed.
When Deng Xiaoping made his ``southern tour'' in 1992, organizational
activity in Wenzhou took off again. By August 2002 there were 104 such
non-governmental business associations at the city level. In addition,
there were another 321 associations at the county, county-level
municipality, and district levels, with some 42,624 members covering
most of Wenzhou's industrial enterprises.
Some of these associations were, like those in Tianjin and Yantai,
clearly affiliated with if not integrated into government. But others--
including the Lighting Chamber of Commerce, the Shoe and Leather
Industry Chamber of Commerce, and the Apparel Chamber of Commerce--were
initiated by the enterprises themselves. They grew up ``outside the
system'' (tizhiwai), though they quickly developed good relations with
the Association of Industry and Commerce. Unlike the associations in
Yantai, where the government is responsible for most of the funding,
most if not all associations in Wenzhou are self-funded. For instance,
the Wenzhou Apparel Industry Chamber of Commerce (Wenzhou fuzhuang
shanghui), perhaps the largest and most successful of the various
industry associations in Wenzhou, began with only 10 enterprises in the
early stages. The lead was taken by Liu Songfu, head of Golden Triangle
Enterprise (Jin sanjiao gongchang). Although the Association of
Industry and Commerce supported the establishment of the association,
it provided no funds; the entire cost of running the association over
the first years--some 100,000 yuan--was borne by Liu and a small number
of other leaders.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Chen Shengyong, Wang Jinjun, and Ma Bin, Zuzhihua, zizhu zhili
yu minzhu (Organized, self governance and democracy) (Beijing: Zhongguo
shehui kexue chubanshe, 2004), p. 285.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the early years, the Apparel Chamber of Commerce, like other
business associations, maintained very close relationships with
political leaders. The deputy head of the Alliance of Industry and
Commerce, Wu Ziqin, chaired the first Congress of the chamber of
commerce, and a number of political leaders were named either honorary
board members or senior advisors. The support of the Alliance of
Industry and Commerce, which became the sponsoring unit (guakao danwei)
of the new chamber of commerce, was necessary for the chamber's
registration, its ability to secure office space, and ability to
convince other enterprises to join. The authority of the Alliance also
supported the chamber's efforts to enhance quality control.
Over time, however, relations between trade associations and
government have become more (but not completely) institutionalized.
Personal relations between association leaders and government leaders
remain close, but there has been a tendency for government officials to
be less involved in the internal affairs of trade associations.
Although the government still appoints a few trade association heads,
77 percent report that they freely elect their chairmen in accordance
with their own rules of operation.\8\ Moreover, the internal
organization of trade associations--how many directors they have, how
many committees they set up, and whether to organize training and
consulting activities to raise funds for the association--seems to be
free of government interference. Indeed, the fact that Wenzhou's trade
associations receive no government funding makes them quite
entrepreneurial. In addition to imposing membership dues, trade
associations organize training classes to impart technical expertise
and provide consulting services to raise funds. They also organize
trade group trips abroad so members can learn about industry trends and
relay the latest information and technical standards to colleagues back
home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Yu Jianxing, Huang Honghua, and Fang Liming, Zai zhengfu yu
qiye zhi jian-yi Wenzhou shanghui wei yanjiu duixiang (Between
government and enterprise-looking at Wenzhou's chambers of commerce)
(Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2004), p. 286.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The changing relationship between industry associations and the
government may be symbolized by the Apparel Industry Chamber of
Commerce. The chamber amended its charter in 2003 to specify that
government officials should not be named as advisors.
The reorganized Advisory Commission was composed of five
prestigious entrepreneurs who had previously served as vice chairmen of
the chamber.\9\ This change was not an assertion of chamber
independence from government supervision so much as a reflection of the
government's growing trust that this NGO could run its own affairs
without running afoul of government concerns. Elections for leadership
roles in chambers are becoming more competitive. The Apparel Industry
Chamber of Commerce was the first to introduce cha'e elections (in
which the number of candidates exceed the number of positions), and
others have emulated the practice. Some have borrowed the practice of
``sea elections'' (hai xuan) from village elections, allowing
nominations for association head to be nominated freely by members. In
2000, Liu Songfu, who spearheaded the establishment of the Apparel
Industry Chamber of Commerce, was defeated by Chen Min, the leader of a
new generation of entrepreneurs who have expanded the scope of chamber
activities as well as its membership.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Chen Shenggyong, et. al., Zuzhihua, zizhu zhili yu minzhu, p.
294.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wenzhou's business associations even have a degree of influence
over government policy. For instance, the regulations governing
Wenzhou's shoe and leather industry, mentioned above, were a
collaborative effort between the government and industry
representatives. Similarly, the ``10th Five-Year Development Plan of
the Wenzhou Apparel Industry'' was worked out by the Wenzhou Apparel
Chamber of Commerce in coordination with the city's Economic
Commission. During sessions of the local people's Congress and Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Wenzhou's chambers
of commerce recommended 141 entrepreneurs to join those two bodies and
raised 54 proposals. The General Chamber of Commerce (Association of
Industry and Commerce) also organized members of the CPPCC to draft a
proposal to create an industrial park.\10\ Trade associations have
clearly given Wenzhou entrepreneurs a voice that they would not have
had individually. Nevertheless, studies indicate that the influence of
trade associations remains limited.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Yu Jianxing et. al., Zai zhengfu yu qiye zhi jian, p. 80.
\11\ Chen Shenggyong, et. al., Zuzhihua, zizhu zhili yu minzhu, p.
263.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although government officials have withdrawn, at least to some
extent, from
participation in trade associations, entrepreneurs are increasingly
participating in politics, particularly in the people's congresses and
Chinese People's Political Consultative Congresses (CPPCCs) at various
levels. By 2003, a total of 421 members of 64 chambers of commerce
participated in People's Congresses or CPPCCs, including 3 in the
National People's Congress and 13 in the provincial people's
Congress.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Chen Shenggyong, et. al., Zuzhihua, zizhu zhili yu minzhu, pp.
229-230.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deliberative Democracy. North of Wenzhou, in the county-level city
of Wenling, subordinate to the prefectural-level city of Taizhou, a
system of ``deliberative democracy'' (xieshang minzhu) has been
developing. This system of democratic consultative meetings (minzhu
kentan hui) began in June 1996 when one of the townships under
Wenling's jurisdiction, Songmen, held a meeting as part of a campaign
to carry out ``education on the modernization of agriculture and
villages.'' The people expressed no interest in yet another ``you talk,
we listen'' campaign. Confronted with this apathy and resentment, local
leaders decided to try something different. Instead of having the
cadres on the stage speaking to peasants assembled below, they invited
the peasants to take the stage and express their opinions. The meeting
apparently became very lively and there was a direct interchange of
views between the ``masses'' and the cadres.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Jia Xijin and Zhang Yun, ``Zhongguo canyushi minzhu de xin
fazhan'' (A new development in China's participatory democracy), in Mu
Yifei and Chen Yimin, eds., Minzhu kentan: Wenlingren de chuangzao
(Democratic consultation: A creation of the people of Wenling)
(Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2005), pp. 80-93.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As in most areas of China, there were a variety of tensions and
problems that this new form of ``political and ideological work''
(which is what this forum started out as) addressed. There were
tensions between the townships and the villages, between the cadres and
the people, between the party committee and the government at the
village level, and among cadres. What the leadership in Songmen
township sensed very quickly was that by involving the people in
discussions of public issues, different cadres and different interests
were forced to communicate and compromise with each other. Moreover,
real misunderstandings as well as a number of real but minor issues
that affected relations between the people and the local leadership
could be cleared up quickly and on the spot.
For such political innovation to occur in China there must be both
social circumstances conducive to change and political
entrepreneurship. In the case of Wenling, the population was quite
prosperous: in the urban areas per capita income is 12,651 yuan per
year; in the rural areas, 6,229 yuan.\14\ Moreover, it is a population
with quite a lot of physical mobility; of the 1.16 million residents in
Wenling, some 200,000 are away from the city on a long-term basis. Such
people, and those who travel for shorter lengths of time, bring back a
greater democratic consciousness. The rapid development of Wenling's
economy and the exercise of village autonomy in recent years had
similarly stimulated the growth of democratic consciousness. Such
developments stood in contrast with the non-democratic ways of making
decisions, increasing tensions with the local cadres and making
decisions difficult to
implement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Dong Xuebing and Shi Jinchuan, ``Zhidu, boyi yu quanli
chonggou'' (System, game, and the restructuring of power), in Mu Yifei
and Chen Yimi, ed., Minzhu kentan, p. 107.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Democratic consultations operate somewhat differently at the
village and township levels. At the village level, in 1998 peasant
representative congresses (nongmin daibiao dahui) began to be formed.
Each production team (xiaozu) would select one or more representatives,
depending on the size of the production team, and members of the
village party committee and the village committee (the government side
of village administration) are de facto members. In 1999, this system
took on the name of ``village assembly'' (cunmin yishihui). This system
has now spread throughout Wenling; of the villages under Songmen
township, most convene an average of two assembly meetings per month.
This system is regarded as an extension of the democratic consultation
system.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Xiao Qing, ``Wenling cunyihui: Nituli dansheng Zhongguo xin
xingtai minzhu zhengzhi'' (Wenling's village assemblies: A new form of
democratic politics born from China's soil), in Mu Yifei and Chen
Yimin, eds., Minzhu kentan, pp. 179-180.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many of these meetings revolve around public finance, one of the
most contentious issues in rural China. In one village under Ruohuang
township, these assemblies took on a much greater importance after the
village head, who had been elected, used over 1 million yuan of public
funds to gamble, which caused a strong reaction among the peasants.
Previously they had trusted someone they had freely elected to manage
finances honestly, but after this incident they did not trust anyone
and insisted that matters of public finance be handled openly by the
village assemblies. In addition to public finances, there are many
issues that directly affect the interests of villagers in an area like
Ruohuang township: urbanization brings issues of land requisitions,
paving roads, environmental preservation, and so forth, all of which
are taken up by the village assemblies.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Wang Junbo, ``Qiaoran bianhua de `xiangcun zhengzhi' '' (The
silent change of `village politics'), in Mu Yifei and Chen Yimin, eds.,
Minzhu kentan, p. 193.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the township level, democratic consultations are really a system
of open hearings on public policy. When the democratic consultation
system began, discussions flowed from topic to topic, making resolution
of any issue more difficult. After a while, it was decided that each
democratic consultation should focus on a single issue. The topic for
discussion is usually decided by the township party committee or
government, though there are provisions that allow the public to
petition to hold a meeting on a particular topic. The topic, time, and
place of meeting are posted, and anyone is allowed to come, but no one
(other than the leadership) is obliged to come. Democratic consultation
meetings are generally held once a quarter.
At least some democratic consultations do have an impact on public
policy and implementation at the township level. For instance, a
democratic consultation meeting was held in Wenqiao township in July
2002 to discuss the leadership's plan to merge two school districts.
The leadership believed that the merger would save funds and strengthen
the academic level of the remaining school. But such a merger would
affect residents in the district of the school being closed because it
would increase transportation costs and living expenses for those who
stayed in dormitories. Feelings ran very high. In the end, the
leadership decided not to merge the two schools right away, but rather
allow parents to choose which school to send their children to. Before
long, the students enrolled in the weaker school began transferring to
the better school, and the decision was effected without public
outcry.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Jia and Zhang, ``Zhongguo canyushi minzhu de xin fazhan,'' p.
82.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Similarly, a meeting was held in Songmen township in January 2004
to discuss the creation of a specialized market for products used in
the fishing industry. Vendors of these products were scattered and
often crowded into the streets, causing traffic problems. Residents
were asked to discuss such issues as whether to build such a market,
where it should be built, and who should invest in it. Several hundred
people attended the meeting, and the final decision incorporated public
references for the location of the district and the way in which
investment would be handled.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Wang Junbo, `` `Caogen minzhu': zai zhiduhua de yangguangxia''
(`` `Grassroots democracy': Under the light of institutionalization''),
in Mu Yifei and Chen Yimin, eds., Minzhu kentan, p. 190.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
inner-party democracy
Efforts to broaden participation within the party and to increase
competition within the party go under the rubric ``inner-party
democracy'' (dangnei minzhu), although the wider public is sometimes
involved. The two main types of inner-party democracy that have been
pursued are the party delegate ``permanent representative system''
(changrenzhi) and the ``public promotion, public election system''
(gongtui gongxuan). The former is being vigorously, if unevenly,
promoted in many places; the latter largely restricted to the provinces
of Sichuan and Jiangsu. Data on both are sketchy, but the outlines are
clear.
Changrenzhi. The Central Organization Department, following up on
the call for political reform contained in the 13th Party Congress
report, authorized 11 municipalities, counties, and districts in five
provinces to experiment with something called the ``party Congress
permanent representation system'' (dang de daibiao dahui changrenzhi).
Although Mao Zedong had originally called for this change in 1956, it
had never been implemented in a systematic way. The basic idea is that
under ``democratic centralism'' the highest power in the party (at all
levels) is supposed to flow from the party congresses, generally held
once every five years. Those congresses select party committees (the
Central Committee in the case of the national party congress), which
then selects a standing committee. In theory, the party secretary and
standing committee are subordinate to the party Congress and the
delegates that make it up, but in fact the delegates to party
congresses have no power derived from their positions. Many delegates
are leading cadres at different levels, whose power and influence
derives from the positions they hold, not their roles as delegates to
the party Congress. Other delegates are chosen for their loyalty and
service; being named a delegate is an honor, not a position of power.
Delegates are generally uninformed as to the content of the party
Congress or who they are to vote for until just before the Congress
meets. As the saying put it, delegates ``The party committee decides
personnel selections, and party members draw their circles'' (dangwei
ding renxuan, dangyuan hua chuan). Their function as party
representatives ends as soon as the party Congress ends. When another
party Congress is held five years later, another group of
representatives will be named. Power is thus centralized and top down,
contrary to the provisions in the party constitution.
Obviously the CCP has lived with this system for many years, but
two concerns have led people to want to elevate the status of the party
representatives and congresses. One is the power concentrated in the
hands of the party secretary and standing committee has led to
corruption and other abuses of power that have feed social protests and
a general decline in the legitimacy of the party in recent years. The
other is that even members of the party feel little benefit from their
party membership, as they are excluded from information and
participation, much as the general public is. In other words, there is
a problem of the party leadership not only being alienated from the
general public but also from the great bulk of the party membership. If
the ``governing capacity'' of the party is to be improved (as party
documents call for), then the party as a whole needs to be more
functional and the party's legitimacy, both in the eyes of the party
membership and the general public, needs to be raised.
The changrenzhi attempts to address this issue first by having
party representatives elected by members of the party (this has to be
qualified by saying that this part of the changrenzhi is far from being
universally implemented, though it has been in some places) and by
having the representatives serve five-year terms, meeting in annual
sessions. At such annual meetings, the relevant party committees are
supposed to submit work reports for the review and approval of the
party representatives. This is intended to increase the supervision
over the work of the party
secretary and standing committee. The scope of the authority of the
party representatives is one of the issues currently being debated
within the party.
Jiaojiang district in Taizhou municipality in southern Zhejiang
province was one of the places that began implementing the changrenzhi
on an experimental basis in 1988. In this case, representatives are
divided into ``representative groups'' (daibiaotuan) based on locality
or functional group. Each representative group has a head and a deputy
head. The function of the groups is to organize discussion, think about
personnel selection, and to propose resolutions. The leadership of the
representative groups links the representatives to the party
leadership. In the case of Jiaojiang, the district established a
permanent organ, called the Work Office of the Party Congress Permanent
Representatives, to maintain contact between the leadership of the
representative groups and the ordinary representatives. The office
publishes a bulletin periodically (about once a month). There is now an
annual meeting of the party representatives that listens to work
reports by the local party leadership and discipline inspection
committee.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ ``Jianli he wanshan xian (shi, qu) dang de daibiaohui
changrenzhi gongzuo de diaocha yu sikao'' (An investigation and
thoughts on establishing and perfecting the party Congress permanent
representation system in counties (municipalities and districts), in
Xin shiqi dang jianshe gongzuo redian nandian wenti diaocha baogao (A
survey report on hot topics and difficult questions in party building
work in the new period), pp. 232-235.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As party representatives become more important, their selection
must be considered more carefully. In the case of Jiaojiang district,
the number of representatives was cut by a third, from 300 to 200, and
the number of electing units has been increased so that representatives
are better known to their ``constituents.'' Efforts have been made to
increase the number of nominations compared to representatives
selected. This has generated better-educated representatives, according
to statistics from Taizhou (the changrenzhi experiment was recently
extended throughout Taizhou).\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Ibid., pp. 237-239.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps one of the most important issues raised by the permanent
representative system is the relationship between ``leading cadres''
and representatives. Leading cadres at a given level normally make up a
large percentage of the representatives selected to attend a party
congress, often around 70 percent. Recommendations call for keeping
this number down to around 60 percent. So one impact of the permanent
representative system appears to be an expansion of the number of
people able to participate in party affairs--but not by a large margin.
Ya'an city, Sichuan province, began experimenting with the
changrenzhi in the winter of 2002-2003, when end-of-term elections for
local cadres were coming up and when the Sixteenth Party Congress had
just endorsed expansion of the changrenzhi. Ya'an city selected two
places, Rongjing County and Yucheng District, to try out the new
system. The major breakthrough made in these experiments was making all
candidates for party representative to face election by all party
members in the area. In the case of Yucheng district, 12 percent of all
party members were nominated, and in Rongjing County, 13 percent were
nominated. These ``primary candidates'' were then reduced to ``formal
candidates'' through a process of screening (candidates must meet
certain age and work requirements) and voting. By local regulation,
there had to be at least 20 percent more candidates than positions for
the final elections. Each candidate gave a three-minute speech, and
voting was by secret ballot. Six leading cadres were not elected as
party representatives. According to local regulations, when a leading
cadre loses an election, he or she can still attend the party Congress
as a ``special delegate'' (a way of saving face?), but six months after
the election the party Organization Department organizes a poll of
party members in that cadre's district. If the cadre cannot get the
backing of two-thirds of local party members, then he or she is removed
from office. This is precisely what happened to the party secretary of
one village.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Xiang Guolan, ``Tuijin dangnei minzhu de zhidu cuangxin--Ya'an
dang daibiao dahui changrenzhi anli fenxi'' (institutional innovation
in the promotion of inner-party democracy--An analysis of the case of
Ya'an's party representative Congress permanent representative system),
in Yu Keping, ed., Zhongguo difang zhengfu chuangxin--Anli yanjiub
aogao (2003-2004) (Innovations in China's local governmental system--
Case study reports, 2003-2004), pp. 175-199.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Recommendation and Public Election.\22\ Sichuan began
experimenting with the gongtui gongxuan (public recommendation and
public election) system in 1995. It was an obvious outgrowth of the
social tensions in that relatively poor inland province. In 1993,
Renshou county experienced what was until then perhaps the largest
outburst of mass protest and rioting. Economic growth was not a viable
path to social stability, at least in the short run, so the province
began experimenting with political reform. The gongtui gongxuan system
started in 1995 in Nanbu County. At the time, there were about 20-30
cases. In 1998, the well-known Buyun election took place under Suining
City. Despite the issuing of a ruling that said that the Buyun election
was unconstitutional, the gongtui gongxuan system continued to spread
in Sichuan (though it did not, like the Buyun election, extend to all
the voters). In the 2001-2002 term elections, there were about 2,000
cases. That is about 40 percent of Sichuan's counties. It should also
be noted that the system was more readily adopted in economically
backward places where social tensions were high and the political
leadership had no chance of competing on the basis of economic growth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ This section is based on Lai Hairong, ``Jingzhengxing xuanju
zai Sichuan sheng xiangzhen yi ji de fazhan'' (The development of
competitive elections in Sichuan at the township level), in He Zengke
et. al., eds., Jiceng minzhu he defang zhili chuangxin, pp. 51-108.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The basic pattern of the gongtui gongxuan system was to enlarge the
number of people participating in the selection of township heads and
deputy heads. In the past, such decisions were made by the standing
committee of the county. But under the gongtui gongxuan system, the
number of voters was expanded to include:
All staff of the township (about 80-120 people),
The top three cadres from each village under the township
(so if there are 10 villages, that would be 30 people),
The heads of the small groups (xiaozu) in villages
(usually 5 per village, so about 50 people, and
Delegates to the township people's Congress (perhaps 30-
50 people).
In addition, the county sends 5-20 delegates. In the past, these
were super delegates with 40-60 percent of the vote. But in some places
now, they are beginning to implement a ``one person, one vote'' rule.
So, in total, some 200-300 people participate in the selection
process. This is still a very limited electorate, but nevertheless a
considerable expansion from the half dozen county officials who used to
make these decisions. It also has to be noted that in some elections,
the system has been extended to include the party secretary and the
electorate has been expanded to include the whole population. It is not
clear how many townships have undertaken such extensive reforms, but
they still make up a small minority.
implications
The discussion above is intended to be illustrative rather than an
exhaustive cataloguing of the changes that are being experimented with
at the local level in China. There are other systems that have been
used: the ``two ballot system'' in Shanxi, the ``one mechanism, three
transformations'' in Hebei, and the growing role of owners'
associations in some parts of the country, to name a few. The role of
local people's congresses also seems to be growing. These changes do
not, or do not yet, amount to a fundamental change, much less a
democratization of local governance in China, and, looking at the
country as a whole, these innovations appear to be spotty and uneven.
But they do reflect the pressures that are being felt--sometimes by
local officials themselves, and sometimes by central authorities who
want to better monitor local agents--to change local governance,
including the role of the party at the local level. One way of thinking
about these changes is to note that they mark a preliminary effort to
try to integrate the horizontal linkages found in local society with
the hierarchical nature of the party. That seems an impossible task in
the long run, but there are clearly pressures to change the way the
political hierarchy interacts with local society.
Another way of looking at these changes is that they mark efforts
to move ``political reform'' up the hierarchy in ways that do not
require elections (at least elections that are open to the general
public) at levels higher than that of the village. Thus, democratic
consultation meetings take place at the township level, as do gongtui
gongxuan elections and the changrenzhi. Business associations in
Wenzhou influence policy at the county and city levels.
It can be debated whether these reforms are steps on the way to
democracy or whether they are ways of putting off democracy, perhaps
indefinitely. China seems to be striving for ways to implement a system
that simultaneously provides the state with feedback on the performance
of its local agents, checks the power of those local agents, expands
participation in local governance, and generates better governance--all
without Western style democracy.
It should be noted that these reforms are in their infancy and
there seems to be at present little ``spill over'' from one area of
reform to another or from one location to another. For instance, most
observers think that ``civil society'' is more developed in Wenzhou
than in Wenling, but it is Wenling that has adopted the more
interesting political reforms. This seems to be, in part, a reflection
of the levels they are at in the political system. Wenling is a county-
level city of 1.6 million under the jurisdiction of Taizhou
municipality; Wenzhou is a city of over 5 million that is directly
administered by the province. Obviously political reform efforts in
such a major city (and one already known for its ``Wenzhou model'')
would have ramifications that reforms in Wenling do not. This
distinction only underscores the fact that even as localities pursue
reforms of various sorts, the choice of what area pursues what type of
reform is a very political decision, not simply a reflection of social
pressures from below.
What seems to be clear, however, is that these reforms have been
growing in number and depth over the course of the last decade, and
they can be expected to continue as local society continues to develop
and as China continues to face social tensions.
______
Prepared Statement of Xie Gang
may 15, 2006
Rural Government Reform and the People
Over the past four years, with private and US government funds, The
Asia Foundation has implemented a series of programs in the rural areas
of China which aim to improve rural governance and explore solutions to
reconcile the disputes between the farmers and local governments,
especially at the township level. The program results have been the
basis for policy recommendations which Foundation partners have
submitted to the Chinese central government over the past two years.
program summaries
The programs are designed to explore the causes of conflict and how
local initiatives and citizen participation can help to solve disputes
through specific activities:
Survey the main causes of conflict between farmers and local
government officials
This program was implemented before the Chinese government started
to rescind the agricultural tax, which alleviated many of the
frustrations expressed by the farmers described below.
--Tax/fee collection causes the most common and severe
conflicts. The most common answer to the question of how to
improve the cadre-farmer relationship is ``stop collecting
taxes and fees.''
--Cadre corruption has been, and continues to be, one of
foremost frustrations among farmers.
--Farmers often complain of inadequate provision of public
services, such as low quality or high cost in the construction
of roads, primary schools, electricity network and water
conservancy projects.
--The government-mandated production of specific crops also
aggravates farmers. For example, farmers intending to grow
grain may be forced to grow watermelon. There have been cases
when farmers destroy seedlings to avoid cultivating crops they
do not want to grow. Conflicts are also caused by failure to
follow the procedure in village elections or between the new
and retiring committee directors and members. Many farmers
complain that the township Party Secretaries manipulate the
selection of candidates and the selection process is not
transparent.
Explore organized mechanisms for farmers for fundraising and
management of public services
The program provided a small fund to two villages where neither the
Party branch nor village committee was functioning properly, to build a
road and a small irrigation canal. Over the course of the program, the
program team helped farmers develop a set of simple rules and
procedures for electing the management team, raising funds from the
farmers, mobilizing free labor from the village, and maintaining
transparent accounting books. This project serves to illustrate to the
local government that conflicts can be reduced if the government is
accountable in providing quality public services and maintaining
transparency.
Train farmer representatives (nengren)
In this program, some 700 farmers and 100 township employees joined
in the training. Training courses are provided for farmer delegates to
the local people's congress, farmers who handle complaints and
petitions among their peers, and farmer activists to provide them with
basic knowledge regarding the laws, regulations, policies and their
responsibilities to supervise the government. The training encourages
these groups to observe relevant laws when they complain or petition
the government, rather than inciting violence. Local government
employees are also recruited to the training courses where they and
farmers improve mutual understanding and interactions.
As part of the program, a pilot program was run to assess the
performance of the government employees. Twenty farmer representatives
were recruited to take part in the assessment. This part of the program
introduces and tests an instrument which the farmers can supervise the
local government staff. The hypotheses is that government staff will
try not to frustrate the farmers if farmers are allowed to participate
in performance reviews, which is a major indicator for the staff's
promotion and higher salary levels.
Survey types of existing farmers' associations
This survey, conducted in 12 provinces in 2004, reveals that there
are four types of farmers' associations. Some of them have been allowed
to register with the local government, but the majority must struggle
to survive. The key members of the association see themselves as the
spokesmen of the farmers. The four types of farmers' associations are:
--Associations that help farmers better understand laws and
policies. They also help farmers protect their rights by
writing complaint letters to higher level government.
--Associations that aim to protect farmers' rights. Some of
them are well organized and have by-laws. The main purpose of
these associations is to represent farmers in the protests to
``alleviate burdens.''
--Associations that are established to help farmers improve
production.
--Associations that are established for specific purposes; for
example, when relocated farmers lose their land but receive
minimum compensation.
Establish farmers' production cooperatives
Although the program technically aims to assist farmers in setting
up production cooperatives, the ultimate goal is to help farmers
protect their rights. Three farmers' cooperatives have been set up with
the assistance of the program team.
Establish community-based service organizations
An association for the senior citizens has been set up with the
help of the assistance. The program is still going on.
The last two projects are both pilot programs that explore patterns
of farmers' organizations. They help farmers initiate coordinated
production or provide services that local governments fails to provide.
It will take considerable time for such organizations to expand, and
show widespread impact of the program.
observations
Most of the township governments are challenged with shortage
of revenue. Roughly 70 percent of them are in debt. Some of them cannot
even pay their staff salaries for periods of three to six months. Such
financial shortages have been intensified by the retraction of
agricultural tax. Yet, each township government is a parallel structure
of the higher levels of government, and therefore tends to be
overstaffed. The primary job of the township government becomes
survival rather than running the township. Even though the central
government has instructed that no extra levies be imposed on farmers
after the agricultural tax is totally rescinded in 2006, township
government will have to refer to collecting some type of fee or tax to
maintain their revenue, and their effort to impose new types of fees
may cause a new round of conflicts with farmers. Regardless, they will
have no time or energy to improve local governance.
Township governments have lost their sense of direction. They
carry huge debt loads, yet while they realize problem issues, such as
the inefficiency of an overstaffed government, there is no way the
system can be streamlined. They now rely totally on the allocation of
budgets from the county government because they have very limited
income resources. Township officials are unsure as to what policies the
central government will formulate regarding the future of township
government.
Township governments tend to be selective when democracy is
introduced in the villages. The government cadres in general do not
believe that farmers are educated enough to exercise their rights
within a democratic system. However, they refer to democratic means
when they believe such an effort can prevent or reconcile conflicts
that may arise. Farmers, on the other hand, do not show intense
interest in reforming the township government except for a few
activists or those whose rights and interests have been disrupted by
the township government. Most of the farmers tend to be satisfied so
long as they are left alone without being bothered with taxes or fees,
and cadres remain impartial over matters like land and public
facilities, and are not involved in corruption.
conclusions
No drastic political reform should be expected in the near
future as too many interconnected issues are involved. Streamlining of
the township government would mean a large number of employees need to
be laid off. Without well conceived or coordinated reemployment
schemes, they may join farmers on petition trips.
Rural governance can only be improved within the current
political framework by strengthening the measures to monitor government
by the local Congress and farmers' organizations.
Chinese rural governments have no impetus to initiate their
own reform, even though there is significant demand for reform from
individuals within the local government. Reform can only be initiated
by outside pressure, namely from farmers.
The central government's current rural policies cannot solve
the fundamental problem of governance in the rural areas. They may
pacify farmers for certain periods, but they do not offer long term
solutions. Given all the problems that the township government faces,
and the fact that most of them are not fully functioning, the policies
may not be effectively implemented. Without redefinition of township
government's functions or thorough reform, sound rural governance may
not be possible.