China Is Not Red Anymore
by Wendy Liu

For those whose concept of China is frozen in the 1970s and for anyone who
would like to know about today's China.

12. Village Elections

	Although changes of the Communist Party of China remain somewhat
theoretical and conceptual at this stage, there have been real political
changes in the life of the Chinese people. The first and foremost is the
grass roots government elections in rural China since the late 1980s.
China's Village Committees Organic Law, passed in 1987, mandated direct
election of committee chairmen, vice chairmen and other members in each of
China's one million villages. Dubbed as "village democracy", these direct
village committee elections, which now include primary and final elections,
have been nothing short of a revolution in China's thousands of years of
history of autocracy.

	As described by scholars from the Carter Center of Atlanta, GA who were
invited to observe some of these village elections, these simple, fledgling
and rudimentary elections were laying seeds for a more democratic system of
future China. The president of the International Republican
Institute, another foreign organization allowed to witness such elections
in 1994, said better, "The bottom line is that, first, 850 million rural
Chinese are getting used to the idea of selecting their leaders, and
second, those elected realize that to be re-elected, they must listen to
their constituents." He then added that about 40 to 45 percent of
those winning were non-Communist. 

	In a conversation with Western reporters several years ago, an official
from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs that oversaw the program said it
best by describing the adoption of rural direct elections as an arduous but
necessary task enabling peasants to improve their lives, and setting
standards for direct voting at the provincial and, eventually, national
levels.  Once again, China's farmers have been the vanguard in the
country's reforms, this time a drive toward [Deng Xiaoping]t's 1987 vision
of national direct elections in China within half a century!