November 4, 2003 marks the fifth anniversary of the enforcement
of the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees. The Guangzhou-based
Nanfang Weekend recently interviewed Zhan Chengfu, deputy
director in charge of grass-roots government construction under the
Ministry of Civil Affairs, on issues of the villagers' autonomy
system and rural grass-roots democracy in China.
10 years of pilot implementation
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Nanfang Weekend: November 4 marked the
fifth anniversary of the enforcement of the Organic Law of
Villagers' Committees, which has quite significantly promoted
democracy at grass-roots level in China. What are the changes that
the villagers' autonomy system has brought about?
Zhan Chengfu (abbreviated to Zhan): Villagers'
autonomy has actually witnessed three phases in its development. It
burgeoned around 1978 and gained much needed impetus as a
provisional version of the law was implemented on June 1, 1988. The
law was further amended and formally took effect from 1998.
Nanfang Weekend: Where did the buds of
the system first appear?
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Zhan: After the political-economic system of the
people's commune was abolished and the "household contract
responsibility system with remuneration linked to output" was
adopted for rural economic administration in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, rural families won their own decision-making power. In
contrast, a system for public affairs administration was not yet in
place in villages. Meanwhile, in some villages in Luocheng, Yishan
County in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region,
something naive emerged: village people coordinated themselves to
manage their public affairs such as fire prevention and guarding
against theft. They put their thumbprints on documents of all kinds
of village regulations and civil contracts, and groups of
contractors gradually developed into village committees.
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At that time, the Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was in
charge of civil affair departments at various levels in the
country. The committee's then secretary Peng Zhen thought highly of
the happenings in Luocheng and dispatched people to rural
grassroots there and to other places to carry out investigations.
Afterwards the investigators found that the villagers'
self-government/help system in Luocheng adapted well to the
"household contract responsibility system with remuneration linked
to output". That is to say, this kind of civil management system
matched the acting economic management system.
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Nanfang Weekend: Then how did the then
central authorities view the changes?
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Zhan: After the investigations were finished in
1984, the then central authorities ordered the Ministry of Civil
Affairs to take the lead in drafting Regulations on the
Organization of Villagers' Committees. In view of this, unlike the
situation in cities, rural reform featured concerted reform in both
economics and politics from the very beginning. Later the
authorities concerned thought that the emergence of villagers'
committees involved changes in the organization of grassroots
political power and thus relegated the instrument in the making to
basic laws and advised to change its name to the Organic Law of
Villagers' Committees.
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The law was tabled to the National People's Congress (NPC), the top
Chinese legislative body, in 1984 and was approved by it on
November 23, 1987. There were four rounds of discussions -- one by
an NPC plenary meeting and three others by the Standing Committee
of the NPC.
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Living long under, and accustomed to, the people's commune system,
quite a few people found it at first hard to accept and even
objected to the radical shift to self-government by peasants
themselves. As a result the law was only promulgated in a
"provisional" form nearly four years after its first draft, and its
amended -- or present version was at last formally brought into
effect on November 4, 1998. Ten years and five months elapsed from
the law's pilot implementation on June 1, 1988 to its formal
implementation in 1998.
Nanfang Weekend: What were the major
problems the new system has brought about?
Zhan: Many cadres, especially those at the
township level, previously had the power of appointing village
cadres, and with the (Provisional) Organic Law of Villagers'
Committees they no longer enjoyed that power. According to the law,
they could only give unenforceable directions to official
organizations at village level; and village officials "would listen
to them if they thought the directions were right and would not if
they thought them wrong."
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The other major conflict arose after 1989 as some people blamed the
law as a product of "bourgeois liberalization". They put a
political label on the law whereas Peng Zhen insisted that the law
was by no means a child of "bourgeois liberalization" but a result
of following the mass line.
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In October 1990, the National Symposium on Village Organization
Building, the first of its kind in the history of the People's
Republic of China, was convened in Laixi County, east China's
Shandong Province. Song Ping, a top-level official of the Communist
Party, made an important speech at the meeting. Soon afterwards the
CPC Central Committee issued a writ ordering each county and city
to select several villages as pilot sites experimenting with and
accumulating experiences of the villagers' autonomy system. The
decision ended the blurred understanding of the system after 1989
and put it in high gear.
Triumphant advance
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Nanfang Weekend: Can we say that
grass-roots democracy spontaneously burgeoned and grew from 1979 to
1988 and was artificially experimented with from 1988 to
1998?
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Zhan: Yes, exactly. The former Party chief Jiang
Zemin proposed "four democratics" in his report to the 15th
National Party Congress in 1995, namely, democratic election,
democratic decision-making, democratic administration and
democratic supervision. China's rural democracy advanced greatly
for a period of time following the 15th Party congress. There was a
landmark event when he made an on-the-spot investigation of the
villagers' autonomy system in Wuhe County, Anhui Province. Jiang
Zemin said in a speech that the system was one of the "three great
innovations" in rural China along with the "system of fixing output
quotas on a household basis" and township enterprises.
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Nanfang Weekend: Can you specify these
advancements?
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Zhan: On the one hand, the rural villagers'
autonomy system won Party's backup as it was further listed as one
of the new socialist goals at the third plenary meeting of the 15th
CPC Central Committee. Furthermore, the Provisional Organic Law of
Villagers' Committees became a regular law, which means any
non-performance of it would be deemed as lawbreaking; on the other
hand, the democratic quality improved.
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In the past some voters scrawled on ballots, for example, drawing
turtles or writing names of foreign presidents on them. This
illustrated their disbelief in the elections. But villagers
gradually realized the effects and benefits that ballots would
bring soon after several elections. Many a villager working away
from home as migrant laborers returned to cast votes and some of
them even returned by charter flight.
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In the meantime, bad things were happening: buying and selling of
ballots, cases of farmers defrauded of ballots by opportunists
through empty promises and offers of immediate effect. These
farmers learned their lesson about what democracy is and how to
realize it and how to improve the ability to be master of their own
affairs. Farmers' attitude toward democracy has been ever changing:
from ignorance to awareness, from clumsiness to adeptness, from
passion to reason and from aloofness to attachment. This
transformation is an ever-developing process and keeps on
going.
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Nanfang Weekend: Farmers must have been
participating in democracy for their own sake. Do villages need to
set up a new interest balancing mechanism after the people's
commune as the "power of public right" retreats? (Meaning:
Abolishing the people's commune system and establishing a new
rural economic development mode.)
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Zhan: Previously only the words of either the
state or local authorities counted but a channel for ordinary
people to confer or make decisions was never provided for. The
villagers' autonomy system provided opportunities for farmers to
train themselves in democracy. If an elected village head was
afterwards found out to have deceived his supporters he would
either be recalled or fail the next election. This is a mark of
social progress. It's not necessary to go so far as to appeal to
violence for social adjustment. This is the direction.
Some conflicts remain
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Nanfang Weekend: We noticed that in
recent years in some places the new rich have been eagerly running
for positions as village heads. What is your comment on this?
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Zhan: The motives behind the new rich's
aspirations for village positions are various: some are thinking of
gaining some advantage, some are thinking of bringing honor to
their ancestors, some are thinking of pursuing higher ideals in
lives and get more involved in affairs of public welfare after they
have accumulated enough money. I would rather say it's quite normal
for this to happen.
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Nanfang Weekend: But in quite a few
places scandals about bribery and organized crime intervention in
elections have been heard. What in your mind is the most striking
dissonance since the villagers' autonomy system was put in
place?
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Zhan: Candidates, voters and outside forces
interact on one another during an entire election process and the
major dissonance in recent years can be categorized in three
corresponding groups:
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First, work needs to be done to improve the voters themselves so as
to build sound elections. There were cases where some voters upset
elections at the end of ballot counting.
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Second, candidates sought to win elections by foul means such as
using bribes or introducing organized crime to realize
self-interest. Villagers were able to see through them and better
use their ballots after they received lessons on this.
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Third, higher authorities at the township or county level sometimes
interpose themselves. For example, those elected by village voters
can only hold positions that have no real power, with the positions
of actual power being held concurrently by officials at county
government level. In addition, it's not uncommon that village
officials elected by villagers get dismissed by higher
authorities.
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But the most serious conflicts happened between villagers'
committees and village Party committees. Village heads and Party
secretaries were often in dispute with each other about who should
have the final word in decision-making, who should be entitled to
approve expense account submissions, to hire low-ranking officials
and to keep official seals. How to settle such disputes? How to
reconcile the rule of law and the people's mastering in their own
affairs with the principle of leadership by the Communist
Party?
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Now some places are experimenting with the so-called "dual-ballot
system" and the system of "common recommendation and common
election" to expand nominations and improve legitimacy of
elections. In 2002 the CPC Central Committee issued its 14th writ
of the year clearly indicating that nominees for village Party
secretaries should be elected heads of villagers' committees
beforehand in a bid to scale up a mass basis for grass-roots Party
branches and organizations.
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A timetable?
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Nanfang Weekend: The outside world seemed
to have given high praise to China's promotion of grass-roots
democracy, but people also think we shouldn't limit democratic
autonomy only to the village level but to expand it.
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Zhan: In fact rural residents' enthusiasm in
direct elections has run high since 1998 hoping that bigger steps
are to be taken in the building of grass-roots democracy. In 1999
elections were pushed from the village level to the township level,
for example, an experimental direct election was held in Buyun
Township, Suining City, Sichuan Province. But relevant Chinese laws
stipulate that elections for heads of counties and townships should
be done by deputies to the people's congress at same level, so the
practice was called off later.
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A more pragmatic consideration is that experiences from villagers'
autonomy won't fully apply to townships/towns because they are much
larger than villages. One township/town on average has a population
of over 100,000, which is a match for that of a small country. It's
not surprising that villagers know everybody else in his/her own
village. But they never know most of the residents in his/her
town/township.
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Both the election process and approach would have to face changes
when the election moves from the village level to the town/township
level. Candidates will have to hire staff, draw up guiding
principles and raise funds for his/her election and so on. On the
other hand, voters should be able to draw neutral information from
multiple news sources. It will be a systematic project that needs
to be coordinated by gradually promoted political reforms.
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(China.org.cn by Chen Chao and Daragh Moller, December 16,
2003)