Elections and Participation in Government Administration

Elections and Participation in Government Administration

On the second aspect of the Chinese government system, the process by which people elect their government representatives and officials, its importance is also dependent on social circumstances. The Chinese citizens may consider it to be less important than the third aspect, the provision of benefits by the government, to be discussed later.

The Chinese people can influence the affairs of the government in a number of ways. First, on the village level, there are now wide-spread direct elections. The citizens directly select officials to govern their own village. Such elections were not introduced by a policy of the central government from above. They were instituted from below when the organization of the Commune System collapsed in the early 1980s after collective farming was abolished. The civic affairs of the villages previously administered by the Commune System, such as the provision of security and the protection of public land, had to be attended to. Quite spontaneously, people in the villages wanted to elect officials to administer such affairs. The officials are nominated by the Party organization but individuals who are not Party members can seek nomination and many of them actually have been elected. On the village level, democracy in the Western definition prevails in China. The election is genuine because the villagers know whom they want to elect and the Party desires for its own good to get capable and popular people to take care of the affairs of these villages. However, direct...