Viewpoint

VIEWPOINT A U.S. observer assesses the village vote CHINA: GRASS-ROOT DEMOCRACY An experiment with rural elections begins to mature	ASIA	March 30, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 12
Seems Legit A Thumbs-Up for China's Electoral Experiment By Robert A. Pastor he first question i encounter when i mention the subject of village elections in China to a Western audience is: "Elections in China? Are you serious?" The answer is that I am serious and so is China. A law passed in 1987 by the National People's Congress mandates that elections should be held every three years in China's 930,000 villages. How free and fair are these votes? I have organized missions to observe elections in China in four provinces and interviewed leaders in a fifth. Other groups have observed elections elsewhere. For an election to be free, citizens must have a private and genuine choice; for it to be fair, no one should have a built-in advantage. China's law meets these minimal conditions with a secret and individual ballot, multiple candidates for each position and a transparent and publicly monitored count. Most of the observed elections tend to be competitive and reasonably fair, though the total number of elections monitored is statistically insignificant compared with the total number of villages, and data doesn't exist to judge how representative these samples are. A good sign is that the Ministry of Civil Affairs listens to and implements many of the recommendations offered by outside observers. Our team just reached an agreement to help the ministry establish a "rapid and transparent" national system to collect data on elections. This will permit the government to locate and correct the flawed elections. The government is trying to improve the process, but it is not easy. Unelected local party cadres continue to exercise considerable influence, but the bigger problem is technical incapacity and inexperience. One candidate will often view technical irregularities as politically motivated, and I've seen such fears transform patient voters elsewhere-in Haiti and Guyana, for example-into bomb-throwers. That's why China is right to start at the grass-roots level and train villagers in the mechanics of elections. So far, they are making progress. But it's uneven, and even "model villages" make mistakes. Deng Xiaoping predicted in 1987 that it would take 50 years to complete the transition to direct national elections. Before I went to China, I had thought it could be done in a few years. I've revised my view, sobered by the magnitude of the task. With China's economic development has come the challenge of evolving a popular, stable and flexible political framework that would allow the country to channel both the social forces that have emerged as a result of growth and the frustrations that could occur in the event of an economic downturn. China's success in meeting these challenges will affect not just Chinese but the whole world. China's villages weren't built by Potemkin or Jefferson, but elections there are expanding choices for the country's 900 million rural people and building a stable foundation for a new political framework. This could be the first step on a long march. Robert A. Pastor, professor at Emory University and fellow at the Carter Center, has organized the monitoring of 20 elections around the world
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A Thumbs-Up for China's Electoral Experiment

By Robert A. Pastor

he first question i encounter when i mention the subject of village elections in China to a Western audience is: "Elections in China? Are you serious?" The answer is that I am serious and so is China. A law passed in 1987 by the National People's Congress mandates that elections should be held every three years in China's 930,000 villages. How free and fair are these votes? I have organized missions to observe elections in China in four provinces and interviewed leaders in a fifth. Other groups have observed elections elsewhere. For an election to be free, citizens must have a private and genuine choice; for it to be fair, no one should have a built-in advantage. China's law meets these minimal conditions with a secret and individual ballot, multiple candidates for each position and a transparent and publicly monitored count.

Most of the observed elections tend to be competitive and reasonably fair, though the total number of elections monitored is statistically insignificant compared with the total number of villages, and data doesn't exist to judge how representative these samples are. A good sign is that the Ministry of Civil Affairs listens to and implements many of the recommendations offered by outside observers. Our team just reached an agreement to help the ministry establish a "rapid and transparent" national system to collect data on elections. This will permit the government to locate and correct the flawed elections. The government is trying to improve the process, but it is not easy. Unelected local party cadres continue to exercise considerable influence, but the bigger problem is technical incapacity and inexperience. One candidate will often view technical irregularities as politically motivated, and I've seen such fears transform patient voters elsewhere-in Haiti and Guyana, for example-into bomb-throwers. That's why China is right to start at the grass-roots level and train villagers in the mechanics of elections. So far, they are making progress. But it's uneven, and even "model villages" make mistakes. Deng Xiaoping predicted in 1987 that it would take 50 years to complete the transition to direct national elections. Before I went to China, I had thought it could be done in a few years. I've revised my view, sobered by the magnitude of the task.

With China's economic development has come the challenge of evolving a popular, stable and flexible political framework that would allow the country to channel both the social forces that have emerged as a result of growth and the frustrations that could occur in the event of an economic downturn. China's success in meeting these challenges will affect not just Chinese but the whole world. China's villages weren't built by Potemkin or Jefferson, but elections there are expanding choices for the country's 900 million rural people and building a stable foundation for a new political framework. This could be the first step on a long march.

Robert A. Pastor, professor at Emory University and fellow at the Carter Center, has organized the monitoring of 20 elections around the world