china (development and governance) || innovations in china’s local governance: an assessment

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b1462 China: Development and Governance 8 October 2012 1:24 PM

5Innovations in China’s

Local GovernanceAn Assessment

XIA Ming *

China’s experimentations with innovative mechanisms at local levels to explore a politically safe pathway to democracy have so far failed to promote democratic governance in terms of both scale and scope.

A “free and democratic China” was once a rallying cry for the Chinese communist revolution. In 1945, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong once stated his ambition for a “free and democratic China”: “ ‘A free and democratic China’ will be a country where its governments of all levels up to the central government are produced by universal, equal, and confidential elections and the government is accountable to the people who elect it. It will follow Sun Yat-sen’s ‘three principles of the people’, Lincoln’s principle of ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’, and Roosevelt’s ‘four freedoms’.”1 Based on the face value of his words, Mao endorsed a universalistic understanding of democracy.

In Deng Xiaoping’s emphasis on “China’s special characteristics” and economic development, democracy was regarded as a luxury for the Chinese within the foreseeable future. However, his successor Jiang Zemin’s signature improvisation in front of a democratic audience — a recitation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech2 — showed that Jiang also had a universalistic understanding of democracy. Over time, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has shifted its position from a universal understanding of democracy to a class-based one (capitalist versus proletarian democracy)

* XIA Ming is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York (Graduate Center and College of Staten Island).1 Translated from The Collected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 4, People’s Publishing House, Beijing, 1993, p. 27.2 Jiang Z, 2006, The Collected Works of Jiang Zemin, vol. 1, People’s Publishing House, Beijing, 2006, at <http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64184/64185/180137/10818680.html#> (accessed 16 August 2012); Yang J, Political Struggles during China’s Reform Era, Excellent Culture Press, Hong Kong, 2004, p. 266.

b1462_Ch-05.indd 37b1462_Ch-05.indd 37 10/8/2012 1:25:36 PM10/8/2012 1:25:36 PM

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38 China: Development and Governance


and finally to a culturally specific one (Western vs. Chinese democracy). Under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao (2003–), the pressure for democracy has mounted as China continues to rise economically. Furthermore, the Chinese government has formulated and promoted a discourse stating that democracy has two forms: a Western form and a Chinese socialist form. An official discourse on China’s political reform comprises four arguments. First, democracy is a good thing; therefore, it is the ultimate goal for China. Second, the substantive contents of democracy and the strategy to achieve it in China differ from that of the West as China is subject to the “organic unity” of “the Party as the leadership, the people as the masters and rule of law”.3 Third, democratisation would be achieved through incremental changes, through “trials and pilot programmes” which would eventually add up to a mature democracy as like “from a concrete case to a broader application” (congdian dao mian).4 Fourth, the Chinese government has the capacity for political innovation in order to lead China to a “socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics”.

A good illustration comes from Yu Keping, an official-scholar and advisor to the government, who claims: “The CPC refuses to follow the path of Western-style democracy, being determined instead to follow the path of socialist democratic politics with Chinese characteristics.”5 The essential part of these characteristics is the “organic unity of the Party as the leadership, the people as the masters and the rule of law”.6 Since current economic development and Chinese democracy have complemented and nurtured each other well, as Yu has argued, China thus needs to improve its governance instead of carrying out structural changes. Under Chinese democracy with socialist characteristics, the Chinese government has actively encouraged innovation in political reform and has been working positively towards good governance. Although not without disagreement, the Chinese leaders and their advisors (Yu has been a leading mind) claim and try to convince the population that the sponsoring and initiation of innovations in local governance (“amounting to reform”) will lead to the development and maturity of a specific kind of Chinese democracy. China will contribute a “vertical democracy” that has challenged the Western democracy to the world.7

Local Innovations for Governance and Consequence

Numerous sizeable and hundreds of small scale experiments have been conducted in the political realm since the reforms were initiated. For example, since 2002, there have been about 115 cases identified from 1,500 proposals for innovating local governance having won the award for “innovations and excellence in local governance” (Table 1).

For a deeper analysis of local experiments and innovations, four national macro-cases have been selected: the Review and Assessment System, the Villagers’ Committees and their Elections, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the Civil Society, and the “Small Government, Big Society” in Hainan. All of them were initiated in the 1980s, when Zhao Ziyang, as the premier and the Party secretary general, was pushing for the most far-reaching political structural reforms ever seen in Chinese communist history to date. Eight micro-cases (Table 2) were also selected for their high-profile publicity (mostly promoted by Yu Keping), which were implemented under the Jiang Zemin era (1997–2003) except for one under the Hu-Wen era (2003–).

The vicissitude of local reforms is reflected in changing political discourses. In China, all formal publications on politics/political science are from state-owned outlets and under the close scrutiny of the Party, specifically under the daily monitoring of the propaganda apparatus of all levels as what is published is highly political.

3 Yu K, ed., The Reform of Governance, Leiden: Brill, 2010, p. 13.4 Ibid., p. 33.5 Ibid., p. 12.6 Ibid., p. 13.7 Naisbitt, J and D, China’s Megatrends: The Eight Pillars of a New Society, Harper Business, New York, 2010.


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Innovations in China’s Local Governance 39


Table 1 Number of Awards for “Innovations and Excellence in Local Chinese Governance” Received by Provinces and the Municipalities Under the Direct Leadership of the Central Government (2002–2011)

Beijing 7 Shandong 5 Gansu 0 Hubei 4 Guangdong 8

Shanghai 5 Liaoning 1 Qinghai 0 Hunan 2 Guangxi 6

Chongqing 3 Jilin 1 Xinjiang 3 Sichuan 11 Hainan 2

Tianjin 1 Heilongjiang 2 Anhui 2 Xizang 1

Hebei 6 Neimenggu 1 Jiangsu 10 Guizhou 3

Henan 2 Shaanxi 2 Zhejiang 18 Yunnan 2

Shanxi 0 Ningxia 2 Jiangxi 1 Fujian 4

Source: <www.Chinainnovations.org> (accessed 4 April 2011).

Table 2 Micro-Cases of Local Governance Innovations: Initiation and Current State

Innovation/ Place Current State and Remarks

Public Recommendation, Direct Election,1998; The Central District, Suining, Sichuan

The innovation intended to make elections more democratic and participatory by allowing voters’ nomination, direct election and campaigning to create the electoral connections between voters and government officials. In 2001, Central Committee Document No. 21 clearly stated that those localities that had elected township heads by means of direct elections and direct voting by voters in the past had not acted in accordance with constitutional regulations or the organic law for local organisations. Sichuan province issued a special document to suspend the practice of electing township heads.

Democratic Forum, 1999, Wenling, Zhejiang

Facing the decreasing effectiveness of traditional control and paternalistic control with the masses, Chen Yimin, Section Chief of the Theory Section of the Wenling Municipal Propaganda Department, suggested trying a “democratic forum” to conduct an equal conversation-style communication with the citizens before making important decisions in 1999. In 2005, this practice was applied to the budget discussion in two township People’s Congresses (PCs): either the randomly chosen citizens were invited to review the proposed government budget and torecommend their budget priorities, or, the members of the township PC were given the chance to do so. It still exists, but has only expanded to one county, Ninghai, within the province. Theoriginal Democratic Forum was narrowed down to focus only on the government budget issue.

Sea Election: Two-Ballot System, 1999, Dapeng Township, Shenzhen, Guangdong

It had the same intention as “Public Recommendation, Direct Election” above. Suspended after the Party Centre did not allow direct elections for township/county-level governments in 2004. The key officials who were responsible for it were transferred, which also confirms a Chinese saying: “The tea gets cold after the honourable ones are gone.”

Appropriation based upon Democratic Selection, 2006, Huinan Township, Nanhui District, Shanghai

Starting from 2006 in Huinan township, the township government earmarked at least 15% of the total budget to the People’s Deputies in the township PC to decide how to spend it and for which projects. It still exists but has failed to export to other provinces. The governments still do not want to reveal all items, especially those for maintaining stability and for the Party expenses. But in 2007, due to the budgetary crises at the township and village levels, the Chinese government introduced a new system: “the township budget being managed by the county (or urban district),” which placed the three reforms of the budgetary process in disagreement with the central policy. Scholars and practitioners involved in these reforms have shown their concern for the sustainability of local reforms of the budget at the township level.

Citizen’s Voice Net, 2003, Wuhui, Anhu

It has survived three mayors and still exists today. It encountered many challenges: Lack of funding, bureaucratic delays and lethargy from other government departments (some refused to share information or respond to requests in an efficient manner); lack of authority to prod and to threaten; the core participants are mostly local elites, a digital gap made it less relevant to citizens at the lower order; the tight control over the Internet limits its effectiveness. The researchers who investigated this case carefully concluded: “To deepen the effort to build e-governance and to enhance the government capacity across the board for social service,

(Continued)


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Chinese social sciences have been characterised by “mobilisation publications”, namely a sudden surge of writings on a specific theme in response to the Party’s call. An examination of how papers in Chinese journals fared using the CNKI database (China National Knowledge) was conducted to gauge the changing outcome of political reforms.

Figure 1 shows the results of a key word search on the four macro-cases. Firstly, the 30-year political development has its high peaks and low valleys, obviously determined by booster or damper events in politics (Table 3). Based on the Four Cardinal Principles (the catch-phrase for conservatism) as a comparison, its two high peaks happened in 1986 and 1990 respectively, corresponding with the anti-bourgeois liberalisation campaign and the Tiananmen crackdown. After Deng’s death in 1997 when Jiang Zemin indisputably took full charge, the conservative influence in China’s political development has been on the skids and this tendency only slowed down in the post-Olympic era. The discourse on both Civil Society and Villagers’ Self-Government was less significant in the 1990s. The former had a breakthrough in 2001 and reached a peak in 2002 thanks to Jiang’s “Three Represents” theory and his intention to keep China’s development abreast with the changing times and the rest of the world (yu shi ju jin, yu shi ju jin). The turning point for the Villagers’ Self-Government discourse happened in 1998 after Jiang called for the development of grassroots democracy.

Secondly, the discursive gap between Civil Society/Villagers’ Self-Government and the Four Cardinal Principles has been widening for decades, which indicates the strong trend of liberalisation

Table 2 (Continued )

Innovation/ Place Current State and Remarks

the entire structure of administrative management has to be reformed, the government flow chart realigned, and the information barrier among departments eliminated. We need interconnection, communication, and coordination among different jurisdictions and departments.”

Yantian Model, 1999, Yantian Township, Shenzhen, Guangdong

To reconcile the logic of self-government for the community and bureaucratic control from the government, the Yantian district government designed a formula under which the residents committees are elected directly by the residents meetings where all residents, both with and without permanent residential registration, can cast votes; meanwhile, a community service station implements decisions from the residents committee and a community work station implements the government policies as an agency of the government. It has been continuedin many other places, including Shanghai. The Party and government control of residents’ councils is actually moving backwards against real autonomy at the grassroots level.

Eight-Step Work Procedure, 1999, Maliu Township, Kaixian County, Chongqing

Since 1999, the new leadership in Maliu Township responded to the rising tensions between the villagers and the government with regards to collecting fees and constructing public projects by creating an open budget and inviting villagers to decide how much money to raise from them and to supervise how it was spent. It had empowered people to defend their interests against predatory local governments. This was abandoned after the Party secretary was transferred out.

Separation of Three Administrative Powers, 2003, 2008, Shenzhen, Guangdong

Within the government (namely the executive branch), three functions are differentiated and given to decision-making, the executive and the supervisory boards respectively align with the goal of “small government, big society.” Proposed in 2001 by scholars at Shenzhen University based upon the experiences in Hong Kong and Singapore, it was revealed to the public in 2003 by Shenzhen mayor Yu Youjun and a heated media debate stalled the reform. In 2008, the central government’s reform of “larger ministries” and the endorsement of the principle of checks among the three administrative powers at the 17th Party Congress resuscitated the reform. Shenzhen officials brought it back but it has quickly fallen into limbo: it has not been openly tabled; neither has it been pushed for implementation. The downfall of Mayor Xu Zongheng, the supporter behind the reform, created a déjà vu: thefirst try failed due to the then mayor’s transfer and corruption charges. The most difficultpart of this reform is that Shenzhen is expected to “make an administrative breakthrough in the government without touching the political reform.”

Source: Prepared by the author.


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in the Chinese academic world, presumably partially reflecting the political tempo of the entire society. If the trends of Chinese political discourse are taken as a good barometer, local reforms and innovations in the political realm can be argued to have been tenacious, but opportunistic by edging forward when the political climate allows, and vulnerable to sudden changes of ideological policies and personnel politics (Table 3). However, the overall trend demonstrates an encouraging “two steps forward and one step back” pattern. Thirdly, the year 2008 witnessed a conservative turn of Chinese politics: Civil Society discourse passed its highest ever point and is on the decline; the Villagers’ Self-Government discourse has reached a plateau; and the Four Cardinal Principles has struggled to move ahead (Figure 2). As part of this conservative turn, in 2011, Zhou Benshun, deputy director of the CPC Central Comprehensive Management Commission and general secretary of the Central

Table 3 Boosters and Dampers in Chinese Political Development

Boosters (Sluice-opening Events) Dampers (Sluice-closing Moments)

1979–1982 — From the “liberation of thought” to the making of the new constitution.

1987 — The Political Report of the 13th Party Congress on Political Reform

1992 — Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour

1997.09 — 15th CPC National Congress: Jiang Zemin’s call for grassroots democracy

2000.02 — Jiang proposed the “Three Represents” theory

2002.11 — 16th CPC National Congress calling for inter Party democracy, continued emphasis on “three

represents”, allowing private entrepreneurs to join the CPC.

2007.10 — 17th CPC National Congress calling for “systems for grassroots level autonomy”.

2008 — Reform of “Larger Ministries”

October 1983 — Anti-spiritual contamination

1986 — Anti-bourgeois liberalisation

1989 — Tiananmen crackdown and political succession

1997 — Death of Deng, Jiang Zemin’s political succession completed

1999 — Clampdown on the Falun Gong

2003 — Political successions

2003–2004 — “Colour Revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine

2008.08 — Post-Olympic era

2008 — Reactions to the global financial crisis and the “Charter 08 Movement”

2010.11 — Reaction to Liu Xiaobo’s award of Nobel Peace Prize

2011 — “Jasmine Revolutions” in the Middle East.

Source: Created by the author.

Figure 1 Papers in Chinese Journals (Limited to the Mainland) on Civil Society, Villagers’ Self-Government, and the Four Cardinal Principles (1980–2010)

Note: CS: Civil Society; VSG: Villagers’ Self-Government; FCP: Four Cardinal Principles.

Source: Compiled by the author based upon CNKI search. The year 2011 has six-month data.

3000

1500

2000

2500

CS

VSG

0

500

1000

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

FCP


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Political and Legal Commission, explicitly wrote in Jiushi (Seeking Truth, the CPC theoretical magazine) that the principle of “Small Government, Big Society” and civil society as the “third realm” are two “faux pas” (wu qu). He also warned about the “trap of civil society” set up by the West and the threat of “social organisations with evil intention”.8

The Chinese political development has had a conspicuous “stop-and-go” pattern. One unique phenomenon has appeared in local innovations for good governance: “blossom and wilt, but bear no fruit,” namely, local governments nationwide have experimented with many new mechanisms and practices to improve the quality of governance, but many macro-level cases wilted after several years. Micro-level cases too were suspended after several years with none having been popularised at a national level (Table 2). The Chinese Democratisation Index Report (2011) has made the following conclusion with regards to all local innovations recognised by the Innovations in Local Governance Award during the past 10 years: “Almost the absolute majority of awarded innovations have had difficulty surviving and many simply disappeared. The number of innovations has also decreased.”9

Explanations for Snag in China’s Pathway to Democracy

When comparing China’s parallel political and economic transitions, it was observed that the political arena has failed to replicate the successful experiences of China’s economic development. Chinese political development did not result in a synergy between local and central governments. One success of China’s economic development was the assured patronage of top leaders when local experiments promised new directions and breakthroughs. The top leadership thus acted as a “midwife” at opportune moments to assist in the smooth birth of new ideas and nurture their growth at the national level. Deng Xiaoping played such a role in both the “Household Responsibility system” in the countryside (the Xiaogang Village Revolution) and the “ Special

8 Zhou B, “Take a New Path of Social Management with Chinese Characteristics”, Qiushi, 16 May 2011, at <http://www.qstheory.cn/zxdk/2011/2011010/201105/t20110513_80501.htm> (accessed 25 June 2012).9 The Research Group of the Chinese Democratisation Index Report, The Chinese Democratisation Index Report, World and China Institute, Beijing, 2011, p. 26.

Figure 2 Papers in Chinese Journals (Limited to the Mainland) on “Review and Assessment”, “Small Government” and “Western Democracy”

Source: Compiled by the author based upon CNKI search. The year 2011 has six-month data.

140

60

80

100

120

RAS

SGBS

0

20

40

60

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

WD

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

Review and Assessment

Small Government,Big Society

WesternDemocracy


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Economic Zones” in the coastal areas (the Shenzhen Revolution). Thereafter through the 1992 Southern Tour and Zhu Rongji’s reforms, Deng was instrumental in facilitating the liberalisation of price and the privatisation of ownership, two benchmarks of a market economy.10

The political development in China has not found either a midwife or a patron who can muster the necessary political resources and navigate through difficult factional power struggles to push forward democratic development. Although there were some efforts to form some kind of symbiosis between the top leadership and local innovations, two problems still persist. Firstly, in contrast to paramount leader Deng, the advocates for political development lack political clout to influence the decision-making apparatus, being relatively low in rank. For example, Peng Zhen clearly acted as a midwife and patron for the Villagers Committee election. As the dynamo behind People’s Congress expansion and the patron for the villagers’ self-government, Peng was ranked sixth in the mid-1980s when his career was at its peak. Tian Jiyun, the advocate for “Review and Assessment”, had never entered the circle of top 10 power elites. Both had never joined the most powerful organ of the Party — the Standing Committee of the Politburo.

Secondly, history shows that even if a leader of certain standing advocates political reform, new initiatives will not be expanded upon if the number one leader is cautious and unlikely to throw his weight behind the reform. For example, Zhao Ziyang, a secretary general; Wen Jiabao, a premier; and Zeng Qinghong, a vice president of the state, have been reform-minded and bold in pushing for new experiments in the political realm. Unfortunately, their limited political power did not permit them to jump-start political liberalisation. Regrettably, Zhao’s blueprint for political reform, Zeng’s interest in social democracy and Wen’s repeated calls for political reforms have produced no tangible results.

The absence of a Socratic midwife in the political front is due to multiple reasons. The primary one is the unique world view of the top leaders. The current leadership suffers a huge cognitive gap between its understanding of democracy and its urgency in Chinese development. Their formative years were traumatised by “the Great Leap Forward”, “the Great Famine” and “the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in an isolated totalitarian regime. To compare them to their predecessors (Deng and Jiang) and successors ( Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang), they are mostly closed-minded and less ambitious. Hu Jintao has been known for his extreme cautious attitude and his reluctance to take the role of midwife to assist in the birth of political innovation. To compare him to Deng Xiaoping and even to Jiang Zemin, Hu pales in terms of political wisdom, courage and vision. It is difficult to expect any political initiative from him.

The second obstacle arises from the current decision-making mechanism. Due to vested interests, in particular from the big state-owned enterprises (energy, communication and manufacturing industries as well as financial institutions) and the control cartel (the army, public and state security apparatus), a consensus is required within the CPC Politburo Standing Committee before any major decision can be made. Since every member has veto power over major decisions, the top elite of the nine Standing Committee members has fallen into a gridlock. Inertia, instead of initiative, has been the major feature of the Hu-Wen years. The lethargic response towards local political innovations has become especially damaging when China needs visionary leadership to respond to complex social, economic and political challenges, especially after 2008.

The third is the frequent transfer of local leaders which often disrupts local innovation. Since all reforms tend to chip away the existing system or bend some old rules, their continued existence and development depend on the courage and vision of both the local reformers and their patrons. The personnel changes (transfer, promotion, demotion or retirement) often leave local innovations unattended or ignored as new leaders launch new projects to claim credit, while local innovations initiated by their predecessors tend to wither away.

The fourth is that the middle class in China, like many East Asian countries during rapid economic growth, hesitates to challenge the state for increased democratic rights. The Chinese

10 Xia M, The Dual Developmental State: Development Strategy and Institutional Arrangements for China’s Transition, Ashgate, Aldershot, UK, 2000, ch. 3.


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state-dominated reform has created an urban middle class (government functionaries, professionals and business people) who are highly dependent on the state. So far this group of people have not demonstrated strong independent-mindedness against state control as the growth machine is able to generate prosperity at least in the coastal areas and urban regions. The conservative and inactive middle class has yet to generate the required societal push for immediate structural change.

From Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, two local innovations, the Shenzhen model and Pudong model in Shanghai, have led China’s economic development. The Wenzhou (Zhejiang) model, which was developed at a later stage and has been characterised by a spontaneous market order and private entrepreneurship, stands in contrast to this state-guided strategy. During his tenures as Party secretary of both Zhejiang and Shanghai, Xi Jinping had endorsed the Wenzhou model, which is similar to Hainan’s “Small Government, and Big Society”, for China’s future course; this augurs well for possible further liberalisation in China. Bo Xilai, former Party secretary in Chongqing, had complicated the political landscape by stirring up an unconventional populist local innovation, the Chongqing model. For its emphasis on the role of a strong individual leader and the utility of Maoism and Maoist practices for social equity, it was criticised indirectly by Wen Jiabao who indicated that the “lingering effect of Chinese feudalism” and “the poisonous residue of Cultural Revolution” are still two major threats to China’s further reform.11 To some extent, China’s future direction towards either a Maoist or a liberal direction has been swayed by Bo’s falling from power, which ended the competition between the two local models: Wenzhou model versus Chongqing model.

The eventual demise of many local innovations towards democracy is due to the lack of support, or the resistance and intervention from the central government or the Party centre. There are at least four obstacles to China’s response to the democratic challenge: ideological conservatism, institutional gridlock at the top leadership, lack of courage and vision of Hu Jintao, and resistance of vested interests against any changes to the status quo. Together, they have made orderly, top-down democratisation elusive. Despite some attempts from the reform-minded wing of the Party (e.g. Wen Jiabao), the stability-maintainers have been able to block any substantive and qualitative moves towards democracy (see Table 2 as an illustration). In the last two decades of the 20th century, the people in Huarong county, Hunan province have already learned an important lesson with regards to political innovation: “Without reform at the top, reform at the bottom will always be reversed; reform conducted in my jurisdiction without reciprocation from others will be a waste of time; reform which does not open up opportunity for cadres is a mess-up; if the block has started reform, but the line leading to the top does not change, reform will bring in disaster.”12 The message from this local wisdom still applies today: a systemic national top-down change is needed instead of the bottom-up local piece-meal innovations.

China’s Democratisation Uncertain

Elections and votes in a democratic system are almost equivalent to price mechanism and ownership (property rights) in a market economy. As long as people have the ownership of votes in political life and the electoral mechanism to cast their votes for the people who could govern with accountability, the country is considered a democracy. However, the current discourse on Chinese democracy has rejected the core idea of democracy; namely, political accountability of the

11 On 23 April 2011, Wen Jiabao said the following words in a meeting with Wu Jianmin from Hong Kong: “The obstacle to the reforms on the mainland (sic) mainly comes from two forces: one is the lingering effect of Chinese feudalism, and the other is the poisonous residue of Cultural Revolution”. See “Wen Jiabao confronting Bo Xilai: The Chongqing model is forced to cool off ” at <http://www.aboluowang.com/news/data/2011/0508/article_124382.html> (accessed 25 June 2012).12 The original Chinese version is as follows: “Xiagai shang bugai, gaile yao chonggai; wogai ni bugai, gaile ye baigai; ganbu wu chulu, gaile shi hugai; kuaigai tiao bugai, gaile fan shouhai”.


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ruling party must be based upon electoral connections. The lack of electoral connections between the ruling party and the people casts doubt upon the Chinese official discourse on democracy. It is obvious that there has been an unquenchable quest and ceaseless attempts for democratic practices at the grassroots level, which invalidates the official pretext for delaying democratisation by arguing that the Chinese people are not culturally ready and do not have the adequate qualities for democracy. Instead, “an understanding of the inevitability and necessity of developing democratic elections” by the leaders is needed and needs to be deepened along with economic and social developments.13

Yu Keping has this ideal: “The government is the state’s preeminent political authority. It remains located at the centre of civil and political life and public governance. It is the locomotive driving society forward, and officials are in the political driver’s seat.”14 Unfortunately under Hu Jintao, this is not the case. The stagnation or miscarriages of all aforementioned cases on national and local political innovations have been attributed by Chinese scholars to the bigger structural forces from the centre. Some Chinese scholars believe that under the CPC leadership (which includes its control over the army, the cadre and the media) and a centralising political structure, real political reform can be carried out to create an authentic democracy.15 In reality, the communist leadership (an indisputable privilege inscribed in the constitution) in the current power matrix has often been the incompatible and impossible partner to both “the people as masters” and ‘the rule of law”. At both the discursive and institution levels, China’s officially sanctioned democracy is full of contradictions, which will ultimately turn into a pseudo-democratic shenanigan and a killer to the genuine attempts at building democracy in China. Therefore, the “organic unity” laid down by the communist leadership has actually turned into an “impossible trinity”.

Though findings have attributed the failure of local innovations in democracy to major obstacles arising from the inadequacy of national law and the Party’s omnipotent and omnipresent power in political system, the Chinese top leadership is still reluctant to initiate structural reforms to nurture a democratic transition. In the National People’s Congress (NPC) meeting in March 2011, Wu Bangguo, the chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, said so six times in response to questions about China’s move towards Western democracy: “No rotation of power among multiple parties, no pluralism in the guiding principle of the country, no separation of three powers, no bicameralism, no federalism, and no privatisation.” If the bridge to democracy has already been built by Western thinkers and practised by the majority of countries in the world, it is unwise for the Chinese leadership to insist on “crossing the river by groping for stones”. As political dissent is not tolerated, “the harmonious society” has degenerated into a “harmonising society”. Understandably some Chinese scholars have announced the death of reform and the beginning of political trickery (zheng zhi hu you).16 Wen’s lonely and fruitless voice for political reform has been misconstrued as “acting” due to the conspicuous gap between his rhetoric and delivery.

Samuel Huntington once commented: “Economic development makes democracy possible; political leadership makes it real.”17 After three decades of rapid economic growth, the ball now is in the court of Zhongnanhai. The top Chinese leaders have started talking about a “top design in the superstructure” that is needed for China’s development. The question is when the top design will be ready. Most China observers do not expect too much from the current leadership. Thus any major breakthrough in meaningful top-down political reform will depend upon how the Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun case would be handled since the results of factional competition between the Wenzhou model

13 Huang W and Chen J in Yu, 2010, p. 91.14 Ibid., p. 24.15 Zhou T et al, The Assault of a Fortified Position: A Research Report of Political Structural Reform in China after the 17th Congress, Shengchan Jianshe bingtuan chubanshe, Xinjiang, 2007, pp. 6–9.16 Wu G 2008. “Where is China heading for under two policies at all costs”, 16 December 2008 at <http://www.chinesepen.org/Article/sxsy/200812/Article_20081216213352. shtml> (accessed 16 August 2012). 17 Huntington, S, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, p. 316.


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endorsed by Xi Jinping and the Chongqing model advocated by Bo Xilai point to two different directions for China’s political economy. It may have to wait for the next generation of leadership at the 18th Party Congress in 2012. However, social forces (e.g. the irreversible expansion of civil society and the emergence of oppositional forces such as the Charter 08 movement led by Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo) have become more restive for a bottom-up change. A race between the Chinese ruling elite and social forces will determine the manner and direction of China’s democratisation.


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china (development and governance) || innovations in china’s local governance: an assessment

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