China making progress in establishing democracy

By Renee Schoof

NORTH TAIPING VILLAGE, China (AP): In the midst of a cold snap, 1,200 villagers huddled on stools in the school playground to vote in their first primary election under a new law that prohibits Communist Party interference.

Elections in North Taiping and other villages across China mark a new stage in China's flirtations with local democracy. For the first time, elections are taking place under a law that guarantees direct nominations by voters, secret ballots and public counting.

Direct elections in China have been highly limited and, in many cases, flawed by fraud or indifference to the rules. Only villages, which fall below the lowest official level in China's government, have the right to hold direct elections for leaders.

Still, China has been making progress establishing democracy as a grassroots norm. Since the first village election law was passed in the late 1980s, Ministry of Civil Affairs officials have been trying to set good election standards nationwide. The new law, passed in late 1998, puts central government backing behind these efforts.

Now debate is stirring in think tanks and among reform-minded officials about whether China could accept elections at higher levels.

"I think more people in the central government will support elections because corruption is getting worse," said Li Fan, head of a private think tank, the World and China Institute.

Party exhortations against graft aren't working, but elections are a way to get rid of corrupt or incompetent leaders, Li said.

The primary election in North Taiping village -- a collection of one-story brick houses two hours south of Beijing -- showed how keen people are to have some control over their government.

Villagers nominated 147 people for the five spots on the village committee, which decides how the village uses profits from village-owned businesses, mediates civil disputes and enforces government policies. Vote counters stationed at a dozen blackboards around the school yard ran out of room and had to write on the brick wall.

The primary was quiet. No campaigning, no cheering or jeering. Despite the 23-degree cold, many voters who had assembled outdoors at 8 a.m. stayed past lunchtime to watch the vote counting.

Five days later and in another school yard assembly, eight candidates chosen from the primary were on the ballot: two for chairman, two for vice chairman and four for the three committee member positions.

Zhao Jinzhou, the local Communist Party boss and village chief for 10 years, lost narrowly to the No. 2 party official, Xu Guangquan.

The Communist Party encourages its grassroots members to run in elections and often recruits noncommunist winners.

North Taiping had held four previous elections since China started to allow village voting in 1987, but officials said the primaries had never been done on a one-person, one-vote basis.

"What we've seen is encouraging," said Tom Crick of the Carter Center, a U.S.-based group that promotes democracy.

Part of a recent observer mission, Crick said the rules in the new law about secret ballots, multiple candidates and nominations by voters were being carried out.

Not all elections go as smoothly as North Taiping's.

In a village in Linqu County, eastern Shandong province, villagers nominated and elected four villagers who had led a protest alleging their local officials unfairly allocated farmland. A week after the election, the four were thrown in jail and charged with organizing people to attack a government organ, the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China reported.

Government officials confirmed the protest had occurred, but refused to say what happened to the jailed leaders.

The impact of even the best village elections in China is limited. The lowest official level of Chinese government is the township, a group of villages.

Townships are run by officials who are selected by the Communist Party-dominated local legislatures.

In a bold experiment in December 1998, Buyun township in a remote part of Sichuan province held a direct election with the backing of local party officials. The national government declared the vote unconstitutional, but let the winner, the township's vice party secretary, keep his post.

In the past year national legislators have visited Buyun and have invited its officials to Beijing to discuss the election.

China would need a framework to pave the way for higher-level elections -- including freedom of the press and of assembly and an independent judiciary.

The Communist Party also would have to loosen its grip on power. Since late 1998, authorities have imprisoned 21 members of a banned opposition party on subversion charges.

While reformers quietly speak of change, others are content to wait a long time.

Zhan Chengfu, the Ministry of Civil Affairs official in charge of promoting village elections, said elections are corrupt or fail to follow the rules in some 40 percent of China's villages. He estimates it will take 50 years until 90 percent of China's villages hold good elections.

"We have to make this foundation first, and then let history decide," he said.