Village governance reforms in China: Paradigm shift or muddling through?

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Part III

The party state and Chinese societyContention, accommodation and collaboration

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9 Village governance reforms in ChinaParadigm shift or muddling through?

Björn Alpermann

IntroductionLong- time observers of China’s rural governance reforms may be excused for sometimes being frustrated at the glacial pace of change in their field (Unger, forthcoming). The Chinese countryside is characterized by a (still) rising tide of social unrest and tense state–society relations. In other words, the situation that Dali Yang (1996: 185) described at the end of the 1980s, when he called rural China ‘the land of discontent’, is still prevalent today. Veteran scholars of village governance in particular have at times been exasperated by the fact that many of the problems originally identified 10 or more years ago have yet to be addressed in a conclusive way (O’Brien and Han 2009). Some have even proposed moving on to other topics deemed more relevant in contemporary rural China than village elections, which were once the hallmark of political change at the grass-roots level. However, taking a long- term view also provides us a chance to answer the overarching question posed in this volume, namely whether China’s central leadership is willing and able to initiate a paradigm shift in rural govern-ance. Or is the leadership simply trying to ‘muddle through’ indefinitely? This chapter attempts to answer these questions by studying one crucial sub-field of rural governance: village self- administration. Against the backdrop of decollectivization and a loss of party- state control over the countryside in the 1980s, village self- administration was introduced as a means to stabilize state–society relations and regain control. As experiments over the following decade matured, a new version of the relevant legislation, the Organic Law on Village Committees, was passed in 1998. Subsequently, a new round of local experi-ments and regional codification started, leading to another revision of the Organic Law in 2009/2010. In other words, each of the three reform- era decades produced its own version of village self- administration. Taking a longer- term perspective on this evolution of the norms and institutions of village governance helps us to understand the shifting political agendas of the central leadership. The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: First, the next section provides a brief overview of village governance reforms leading up to the most recent round of national legislation. Second, the sources of rising discontent and rural unrest are examined. Third, the chapter takes a close look at recent legislation on village


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self- administration to answer the questions raised above: Is there a paradigm shift in rural governance as epitomized by village self- administration? Or is the central leadership simply attempting to muddle through? Finally, the conclusion sums up and contextualizes the findings.

Experiments in rural self- administration1

After years of deliberation and heated debate right up to the last minute, the National People’s Congress (NPC) passed the Organic Law on Village Commit-tees in November 1987 (O’Brien and Li 2000; Alpermann 2001a). The level of controversy surrounding this legislation was evinced by the fact that it was only passed for ‘trial implementation’, meaning that provincial and local governments were given a free hand to experiment with it. The most important contents of the Organic Law were as follows: Village committees (cunmin weiyuanhui, VCs) were to administrate the self- government of villages, and their members were to be elected by the villagers themselves. Thus, village officials would be subject to supervision by the population and run the risk of not being re- elected if they dis-pleased the voters. Second, since VCs were conceived as mass organizations, they would not be part of the formal state administration. Therefore they would fall under the ‘guidance’, not ‘leadership’, of township administrations. They would have to assist township cadres in carrying out policies in their villages, but could not be given direct orders. While these clauses seemed to both establish a truly self- governing entity and introduce popular participation in village affairs, there were also a number of deficits in the legislation: First, the election method was not clearly stipulated, meaning that even ‘elections’ with an equal number of candidates and mandates would be permissible. Such ‘non- competitive elections’ obviously denied the villagers an element of choice and were not capable of threatening village offi-cials with the loss of their positions. Second, the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in village governance was not clarified as the CCP was not even mentioned in the Organic Law. The only possible interpretation was that its leadership would remain intact. But what was the relationship between the party secretary and the VC (or village) head to be? During the 1990s, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which alongside reformist local officials was in charge of village governance, conducted numerous experi-ments and gradually advanced the implementation and institutionalization of village self- administration (Shi 1999). International donors were very active in the field as well. These common efforts resulted in the passage of a revised – and no longer ‘trial’ – version of the Organic Law in late 1998. The most striking improvements were the following: First, the election method was now specified as direct, secret and anonymous as well as at least semi- competitive (that is, there had to be at least one more candidate than positions to be filled). Further-more, candidates were to be nominated by the villagers themselves (now most commonly in the form of open primaries). Second, apart from voting in VC elec-tions, three other ‘democratic rights’ were enshrined: democratic management,


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decision- making and supervision (together with the election often referred to as the ‘four democracies’ or si ge minzhu). To enable villagers to realize these rights, village representative committees (cunmin daibiao huiyi, VRAs) could be formed. These were intended to enhance supervision and improve decision- making, because full assemblies (where all villagers participate) are more diffi-cult to convene and therefore meet only irregularly. Furthermore, VCs were required to publish village accounts and other relevant materials to improve transparency and allow for informed decision- making. This revised version of the Organic Law remained in force for more than a decade, and many large and small institutional innovations were added along the way. When assessing the progress made in village self- governance over the past decade, most scholars are cautiously optimistic about the reforms of the electoral process, yet less so regarding post- election administration (Alpermann 2001b; and more broadly O’Brien and Zhao 2010). Even where VCs are elected in a rel-atively open and fair manner, these bodies often remain beleaguered by other powerful players in the village and beyond (O’Brien and Han 2009). First of all, the party’s leadership in village affairs became enshrined in the 1998 Organic Law, which led to many conflicts between elected village officials and unelected party committees – in particular party secretaries. An institutional-ized mechanism for resolving these conflicts has yet to be found, but since 2002, the party centre has promoted the idea that village party secretaries stand for election as VC heads in order to concentrate all the power and responsibility in one person’s hands. This mechanism is aptly called ‘one shoulder carries (all)’ (yi jian tiao). Similarly, it has been proposed that other members of the CCP branch committee at the village level should run for election as simple VC members (Central Committee Secretariat and State Council General Office 2002). Apart from reducing conflicts between different organizations within the village, this is supposed to streamline bureaucracy and reduce costs. Different regions have employed the method to varying degrees, but it is still not generally seen as a solution to the institutional problems at the village level (Schubert and Heberer 2009). Moreover, other mechanisms have been used in the attempt to align local CCP organs more closely with the villagers, such as the ‘two- ballot system’ in which nominations for party secretaries are open to all villagers, though only the village’s party members take part in the final vote. This system is also still in use and has been adopted by some regions (Li 1999; Schubert and Heberer 2009). However, whether any of these methods can break the hold township party committees have over village party secretary appointments remains to be seen. Second, the relationship between the VCs and township administrations remains problematic. Although the principle of ‘guidance relations’ (not direct ‘leadership relations’) has been reconfirmed in the current version of the Organic Law, township interference in village affairs remains the norm rather than the exception. This is because the policy areas under self- administration are ill- defined, and township authorities often assume overall responsibility for all matters of local governance. In turn, township cadres need village officials to


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carry out the assignments they have received from higher levels. This has made them particularly reluctant to loosen their hold over village officials. Hopes nur-tured by some observers that this may lead to an extension of electoral mechan-isms to the township level (and maybe even beyond) have not been fulfilled. Bold experiments with direct elections to the position of township head (the ranking state, but not party, official) have been ruled unconstitutional. Instead, more indirect methods, best thought of as opinion surveys, are now being explored locally (Li 2002; Dong 2006). Third, informal organizations such as family clans and religious groupings, but also criminal gangs, have taken hold in rural Chinese society and are curtail-ing the influence of local administrative bodies. In a number of villages, the elected VCs provide only a thin veneer of legality for these informal organiza-tions, while the latter in fact pull the strings. In areas where private enterprises are prospering, such as Guangdong, the recruitment of successful businessmen as village cadres has led to dubious amalgams of private- economic and public- political power (Levy 2007). Some richer villagers even engage in vote- buying to secure election, and it stands to reason that once in office they will want to recover their ‘investment’ – for instance by pillaging collective property.

Mounting challenges to social stabilityAs detailed elsewhere (Alpermann 2010; Thøgersen, forthcoming), there is a far- reaching consensus among Chinese scholars that social tensions and political control in the countryside have been rapidly deteriorating in recent years. In par-ticular, there is an ever- rising tide of popular unrest, well documented for instance in the work of Yu Jianrong, a prominent researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) (on his thinking see Thøgersen, forthcom-ing). According to his data, approximately 65 per cent of rural collective pro-tests, officially called ‘mass incidents’ (quntixing shijian), fall into the category of ‘rights protection’ (weiquan kangzheng) (Yu 2010a: 45; see also O’Brien and Li 2006 on a similar concept called ‘rightful resistance’). For Yu these are driven by concrete material interests rather than abstract rights consciousness. But this makes the demands no less urgent. Since the abolition of all agricultural taxes in 2006, the most frequent cause of rural protest has been the (illegal) seizure of land with inadequate financial compensation, but environmental concerns are also increasingly giving rise to protests (Kong 2011: 67). The culprits are usually development companies and their co- conspirators, local officials. Therefore Yu characterizes these protests as mainly reactions to official misconduct at the local level (Yu 2010a: 46). Another category of protests, social conflicts (shehui jiufen) arise from the pluralization of social interests and polarization of society in general. Although state actors need not be involved here, these conflicts may still have dire consequences for social harmony. Organized crime is a third common source of friction, leading to often violent eruptions in local politics (Yu 2010a: 46–7). Dong Guoying, a colleague of Yu’s at CASS, concluded that criminal underground organizations as well as village tyrants were the major


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challenge to regular rural governance. At times, these local despots rule with the apparent blessing of actors in higher- level governments, maybe because the former favour dealing with the latter rather than with a sometimes unruly rural population (Dang 2008: 162–3). Finally, Yu Jianrong distinguishes ‘anger- venting incidents’ (xiefen shijian) as a fourth type of contentious politics in contemporary China (Yu 2010a: 156–60). These are particularly frightening for authorities because they erupt spontaneously after seemingly mild provocations. They are leaderless and often violent, as an amorphous mass of previously unconnected people suddenly go on a rampage. These eruptions can only be explained by widespread public discon-tent and a lack of trust in local authorities (Fewsmith 2008; Shan 2011). Although these anger- venting incidents are relatively rare, they certainly rattle the nerves of officials involved at all levels. Admittedly, the phenomenon of rising protest is not confined to rural areas. But these certainly make up a large share of the total collective protests. Hard figures are not available, since the official term ‘mass incidents’ includes any-thing from small- scale sit- ins to the above- mentioned riots, short episodes as well as longer protests. Official figures nevertheless show an unrelenting overall increase in contentious episodes: from 8,700 in 1993 to more than 90,000 in 2006 (Anonymous 2008). For 2010 a further doubling of the latter number to some 180,000 incidents has been reported (Xin 2012). Against this backdrop of tense state–society relations is the global financial and economic crisis that hit China’s export- oriented industries hard in late 2008 and early 2009: Reportedly some 20 million rural- to-urban migrants lost their jobs in this sector and had to return home, at least temporarily, further giving rise to anxieties regarding social stability (Fewsmith 2009; Alpermann 2010). Therefore, the question of what China’s central leadership has done to improve rural governance and prevent popular unrest becomes ever more pertinent: Although far from a panacea, a well- functioning system of village self- administration could in theory help to relax the tensions and prevent challenges to the CCP’s rule (Kong 2011: 85; Xin 2012), while half- hearted or even insin-cere reforms could ultimately discredit the political centre, whose legitimacy has remained relatively high so far. The next section will turn to this question by examining the most important legislative project regarding rural governance in recent years.

Revising the organic law on village committeesSince the formalization of the Organic Law in 1998, village self- administration has gained a permanent foothold in rural China and many studies find that in spite of the remaining limitations the quality of village elections has risen signif-icantly (Kennedy and Yao 2011). However, the challenges to rural governance described above obviously necessitated further institutional improvements to prevent tensions from spinning out of control. Therefore, in the decade follow-ing the enactment of the Organic Law in 1998, provincial as well as central


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authorities passed numerous legal and policy documents that further developed the village self- administration system (on provincial legislation see Alpermann 2007, 2009). Regional codification and local experiments gave rise to a number of ‘best practices’ but also made the regulatory field increasingly uneven (on local experiments see Alpermann 2010: 95–7; Xu and Ma, forthcoming). There-fore, the need to revamp a standardized national law had become more pressing over the years since 1998. Finally, at the end of 2009 the central government passed a draft version of a revised Organic Law to be further deliberated by the NPC Standing Committee. This body in turn published the draft for further public deliberation on 26 December 2009 (hereafter referred to as the OL Draft). Ten months later, on 28 October 2010, the NPC Standing Committee promul-gated the revised Organic Law (henceforth called the OL Revision). This section will discuss the major changes in the legislation as originally proposed, the ensuing debate on further revisions and improvements, and the changes intro-duced in the version ultimately enacted.

The role of the party

As mentioned above, one of the most crucial and at the same time controversial matters in village self- administration is the role of the party, i.e. the party branch and the village party secretary. In this respect, the OL Draft contains few sur-prises. In fact, hardly anything was changed – the major innovation is a clause added to Article 4 stating that the village party organization ‘is to lead and support the village committee in carrying out its official duties’. This can only be interpreted as a more direct emphasis of its ‘role as leadership core in the village’ already stipulated in the previous version (and retained in the new one). Similar formulations were to be found in implementation regulations issued by several provinces (Alpermann 2009: 401). Nevertheless, a number of commentators have objected to this addition, which demonstrates the sensitive nature of the issue. At a symposium on the draft sponsored by the influential journal Xiangzhen Luntan (Rural Tribune), specialists reached the consensus that the new clause should ideally be dropped. The reasons they advanced were formal-istic rather than substantial, quite sensibly so, since the leadership of the CCP is enshrined in the constitution and is ruthlessly defended against any criticism. Upholding and strengthening party leadership is therefore a principle that all commentators on rural governance must adhere to (Thøgersen, forthcoming). Instead of challenging this principle, the experts at the meeting maintained that repeating the word ‘leading’ or ‘leadership’ (lingdao) within one sentence should best be avoided. Probably more seriously, they also acknowledged that requiring the village party branch to act according to the party charter while at the same time leading and supporting the VC according to the state constitution and rele-vant laws may give rise to conflicts between differing legal bases (Xu 2010a). Similarly, a legal scholar from Henan University of Science and Technology who is an expert on the Organic Law, Zhang Jingfeng, criticized the fact that the abstract constitutional category of VC and the concrete action of a VC in


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individual villages were used confusingly within the same clause. He com-plained that ‘such rudimentary mistakes in our legislative techniques should def-initely no longer be made’ (Zhang 2010). But these criticisms were made to no avail as the OL Revision kept the addition proposed in the draft. Given that the party leadership enjoys such an unassailable position as a central tenet of CCP ideology and party- state organization, the fact that the draft was left unchanged is not surprising. What is noteworthy is that there was such discussion in the first place. Some of the proposals pertaining to the CCP that were advanced during the debate would have resulted not in a reduced role of the party, but rather in a role more clearly defined and therefore more circum-scribed. Thus, the scholars assembled at the above- mentioned symposium asked for the party branch to be included as one of the actors stipulated in the Organic Law who would have the right to initiate a village assembly or VRA meeting, and to even chair these events. The argument made in favour of such a change was simply that it would bring legal documents in line with what is already stip-ulated in internal CCP regulations (Xu 2010a). However, this step toward legal standardization was not taken with the final OL Revision. Perhaps because he recognized that challenging party dominance in village affairs would not be wise, Xiangzhen Luntan’s editor Xu Fuqun made instead a passionate appeal that the party democratize by allowing all villagers to elect their village party secretary directly (Xu 2010b). The paper he wrote to that end was published in August 2010, only a few months before the final vote on the new Organic Law was to be held. In it he boldly claimed that even two or three decades after experiments with village self- administration began, real self- determination of local affairs remained simply ‘a nice fairy tale’ in most of the Chinese countryside. Somewhat more circumspectly, Yu Jianrong (2010b) also clearly addressed the problematic relationship between the appointed party sec-retary and the elected VC head, and argued for the OL Revision to become a ‘breakthrough’, yet without offering immediate solutions to the problems he identified. But there is nothing in central- level documents issued by the party and government departments in recent years to suggest an extension of experi-ments with party secretary elections. If anything, the grip of the CCP on village governance appears to be tightening, as the next section will show (Central Com-mittee Organization Department and Ministry of Civil Affairs 2008; Central Committee Secretariat and State Council General Office 2009).

Election organization

Important stipulations have been added to the OL Draft with respect to the powerful village election commission. This temporary organ is formed shortly before each VC election to organize and oversee its conduct. According to perti-nent central policy documents, the election commission (EC) should be headed by the ranking local party official, i.e. the village party secretary (Central Com-mittee Secretariat and State Council General Office 2009). However, according to the same documents and virtually all provincial- level election regulations, any


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EC member is to step down from this position if they are nominated and/or running as a candidate (Alpermann 2007: 2). This safeguard against undue inter-ference into the election process has also been added to Article 12 of the OL Draft. In the final OL Revision, the formulation has even been strengthened by clarifying that candidates ‘should’ (yingdang) resign from the election commis-sion. The previous formulation could have been read simply as a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive statement. Yet another sub- clause in the same article of the draft that provided for the option to dismiss members of the election commission for neglecting their duties was expunged from the final version. This clause would have given the original constituencies – the village assembly, VRA or village small groups – a new weapon to fight for the protection of proper voting procedures. Despite the pleas of some commentators – such as Renmin University’s Zhu Hengshun – for a more careful selection mechanism for EC members, this deletion weakens the hand of the voters and strengthens that of election officials (Zhu 2010).

Voter registration and proxy voting

One problem local officials face in conducting a valid election is the number of rural migrants. High levels of out- migration mean that the quorum of 50 per cent voter participation has been notoriously difficult to achieve. Provincial election regulations have taken one of two routes to alleviate this problem: Either exclud-ing long- term migrants from the electoral roll and thus lowering the number of absolute votes needed in order to pass the 50 per cent threshold, or increasing the number of votes cast, for instance by allowing some forms of absentee or proxy voting (Alpermann 2007: 3–4). Obviously, both mechanisms have poten-tial negative side effects. If regulations on the circumstances under which a voter can be excluded from the electoral roll are too wide- ranging, a considerable number of citizens may be stripped of their legal right to vote. Absentee voting, however, is costly and difficult to organize, especially when several rounds of voting have to take place, as is often the case. Proxy voting is also particularly sensitive since it increases the ease of vote- buying: Because voting is secret, a candidate willing to bribe another voter cannot be sure that the recipient of the bribe will actually keep his promise. However, if the voter transfers their voting right to the candidate (or someone they trust), the transaction’s ‘time inconsist-ency’ problem can be circumvented (Tang 2010). Article 13 of the OL Draft stipulates three scenarios under which a citizen must be registered to vote: (i) A person holds a household registration (huji) in the village and actually lives there. These are the uncontested cases. (ii) A person holds a household registration in the village but is temporarily living outside the village. On being informed by the election commission that an election is to take place, a person in this case has to announce their intention to vote. They may also – in written form – entrust a proxy to cast a ballot in their stead. Here the OL Draft lumps together two issues best kept separate: voter registration and actual voting procedures. (iii) A person has lived in a given village for more than


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one year but does not hold a household registration. They are to be registered as voters if they apply for this personally and either the village assembly or the VRA agrees to the request. This clause is particularly important for women, who usually move to their husband’s village after their weddings but for various reasons often fail to relocate their household registration. As registering such persons as voters increases the number of ballots cast, it facilitates achieving the required threshold of voter participation. Furthermore, Article 15 of the draft further lowers the quorum by stipulating only 50 per cent of registered voters as the required quorum, whereas the previous 1998 Organic Law required that at least 50 per cent of all voters participate to make the election valid. These issues gave rise to a number of comments. Zhu Hengshun, for one, pre-dicted serious problems if outsiders were to be registered as voters, especially in suburban villages experiencing extreme in- migration. In some of these villages, more than 90 per cent of the population does not possess a local household reg-istration. Therefore, he proposed much more stringent criteria for granting voting rights: at least five years of residency and a two- thirds majority decision by the villagers (Zhu 2010). Others proposed to make it incumbent upon the prospec-tive voters to seek registration instead of asking the election commission to take the lead. This was supposed to counter the trend of enforced or induced partici-pation (e.g. using gifts) (Xu 2010a). Such a procedure would also help to lower the threshold since not all eligible voters will go to great lengths to be registered if they work somewhere else. Finally, Tang Ming, a political scientist at Huazhong Normal University, pointed out that allowing proxy voting was at odds with a ban on the practice that more progressive provinces such as Fujian had already introduced in their own election regulations (Tang 2010). The NPC reacted to some of the criticism raised above by rewriting relevant clauses in the final OL Revision. Accordingly, a villager living outside their village is now required to express their wish to vote in person (benren); making this request in written form is no longer mentioned as an option, and proxy voting is also disentangled from this clause. Furthermore, the law expressly pro-hibits dual registration of voters who reside outside the place where their house-hold is registered. Rural- to-rural migrants will therefore have to choose where to register and many will decide to keep their voting rights where their household registration lies because this is where they usually also hold land- use rights. Finally, proxy voting is restricted by a new clause added to Article 15. To be allowed, the transferral of the voting right is to be made in written form, names of those involved have to be published and, most crucially, only close relatives can act as proxies. This is one of the rare cases in which the central- level legisla-tion has taken its cue from a minority of provincial- level election regulations. Only two provinces, Hainan and Jiangsu, have passed a similar clause, whereas the large majority of provinces only restricted the number of proxy votes one person can cast to three (Tang 2010). This new feature should help to guard against vote- buying, but it is still less restrictive than Fujian’s provincial election regulations.


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Candidates, campaigns and election procedures

Crucial and far- reaching changes have been introduced in these areas of village elections. Ever since the 1998 Organic Law, candidates are to be nominated by voters directly, mostly in open primaries. The new draft further stipulates that the village election commission ‘should’ (yingdang) organize a meeting between can-didates and voters at which the former present their ideas on village policies and answer questions. This is a clear improvement on previous versions and reflects the legislative progress made in provincial election regulations (Alpermann 2007: 6). More problematic is another new clause that states that provincial legislation is to define concrete qualifications for VC candidates. These election regulations have long since contained such qualifications, requesting candidates to be honest, diligent and law- abiding, and to love the motherland dearly and support socialism enthusiastically, etc. (Alpermann 2007: 4–5). The problem here is: Who is going to decide whether a particular candidate is to be disqualified and according to what standard? These clauses give the village election commission great leeway to influ-ence the outcome of VC elections. Therefore, some critics have opined that it would be better to establish only ‘hard criteria’ to exclude certain unwanted ele-ments, such as people with a criminal record (Tang 2010). The NPC Standing Committee, however, decided otherwise and instead introduced specific qualifica-tions in the OL Revision. Thus, a number of ‘soft’ criteria were added to describe eligible candidates: In nominating candidates, voters should consider the common good of the whole village and propose people who behave well, are law- abiding, fair and upright, strive for the public good, and possess a certain educational level and capacity to work. Time will tell whether this will lead to the disqualification of candidates deemed undesirable. Another significant change also stems from earlier regional legislation, namely the new majority rule in second- round elections. In practice, the first round of an election proves less than conclusive since not enough candidates gather the absolute majority of votes needed to be elected. This absolute major-ity is sometimes not even achieved in the following election round, thus necessi-tating a third or even fourth round until all the places on the VC are duly filled. To solve this problem, provincial election regulations stipulated – in apparent digression from the then- current national Organic Law – that a qualified relative majority would suffice in the run- off: A candidate who wins more votes than any others, but at least one- third of the votes cast, would be elected. The very same clause was introduced in the OL Draft and without much debate included in the OL Revision. This is a pragmatic step that again aligns the national law with local practice and regional legislation. This demonstrates the openness of the Chinese law- making process to local- level innovations.

Vote of recall and automatic dismissal

How does a village get rid of elected village leaders before the end of their term if they turn out to be corrupt, untrustworthy or simply incompetent? For a long


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time this was an unresolved issue since the requirements for a recall vote were numerous. The OL Draft makes significant progress in this respect. Article 16 contains a number of amendments: First, it is no longer necessary for villagers to give a reason when initiating a vote of recall. Several provincial election regula-tions had used this clause to specify certain eligible reasons thereby limiting the circumstances under which a vote could be sought. Second, the vote can now also be initiated by one- third of the village representatives (formerly only by the villagers – namely, by at least one- fifth of voters). This significantly increases the likelihood of gathering enough supporters for such a move. Third, the recall vote is now to be organized by the election commission, not the VC itself, which might not be impartial. Fourth and most important, the threshold for a successful recall vote is lowered considerably from one- half of all registered voters to just one- half of ballots cast in that particular vote. Previously, it had been almost impossible to achieve the necessary threshold because so many villagers regu-larly migrate and could not be mobilized to participate in the vote. These changes have the potential to significantly influence the power relations in rural governance. However, at least in one respect, the final OL Revision lagged behind the draft: It reinstituted the authority of the VC to chair the recall vote. The reason for this is unclear, but it could be that it appeared impractical to reconvene the election commission just for this one- time event. A second way to get rid of elected village officials before their term is up is to use a regular mechanism to judge their performance. This mechanism, newly added in Article 31 of the OL Draft, is called ‘democratic appraisal’ and pertains to VC members and all other village officials who draw a subsidy from collect-ive coffers. The appraisal is to be held annually and members of the VC or the villagers’ control group (see below) who are determined ‘incompetent’ (bu chenzhi) in two consecutive years should resign voluntarily or be forced to face a vote of recall. (Note that the appraisal as such may include the party secretary, but that the clause on consequences of incompetence only pertains to other positions.) This provision has been criticized as ‘obviously unreasonable’ by some com-mentators since the term of office is only three years. Therefore, they requested the article be changed so that just one incompetence appraisal would suffice to trigger the aforementioned consequences (Xu 2010a). Although the final OL Revision retained the two- year rule, it changed the article in other significant ways. For one, the democratic appraisal exercise is now to be carried out by a village control organ (cunwu jiandu jigou), probably to make it more independ-ent. Second, being deemed incompetent twice now means that the person in office as a VC member (the only position mentioned) will be automatically ter-minated from their post. So neither a resignation nor a vote of recall is neces-sary. This is another clear indication that legislators want to alter the balance of power in village governance in favour of rural citizens. Finally, a third mechanism to drive out unsuitable village officials is to stipu-late scenarios under which their term in office shall be terminated even without villager participation. Article 18 of the OL Draft stipulates such cases for the


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first time in national legislation. Accordingly, a VC member’s office is termi-nated once they lose their legal capacity in the sense of civil law or are sentenced under criminal law. Again, commentators applauded the general idea, but some experts suggested setting a higher threshold: For instance, a prison term instead of any kind of sentence under criminal law or being deprived of political rights by court decision (Xu 2010a). While he concurred on this, legal scholar Zhang Jingfeng proposed that even a partial loss of civil legal capacity should be enough to end the term of office. He further proposed that under any of these cir-cumstances the person in question would be barred from standing for office in the future (Zhang 2010). The final OL Revision does not accommodate any of these suggestions, but in a somewhat puzzling decision excised the term ‘civil law’ (minshi). So now the article actually reads that any VC member who loses their ‘capacity to conduct’ (xingwei nengli) or is punished under criminal law has their office terminated. What the ‘capacity to conduct’ means and who is to determine whether it has been lost remain undefined.

Post- election administration and supervision

Post- election administration has long been identified as the Achilles’ heel of village self- administration (Alpermann 2001b; Xu 2010b). Without improve-ments in this area, even the best election procedures will not have an enduring effect on raising the standards of village governance. Therefore, amendments to the Organic Law pertaining to ‘democratic management and supervision’ are particularly noteworthy. First of all, the position and authority of the village assembly (consisting of all adult villagers) is further clarified. Not only is the list of issues that need village assembly approval enlarged, but the OL Draft also states that the assembly may alter or nullify any decisions taken by the VC or VRA. This makes the village assembly clearly the highest- ranking organ in the village. Furthermore, it may now be convened not only by the VC but also upon request of one- third of the village representatives. This makes it far easier to hold a meeting on short notice to actually carry out this supervisory role. The VRA itself is a control mechanism of villagers vis- à-vis village officials. But who are the members of this potential institutional counterweight? For a long time this question was addressed only in provincial, not national legislation. And many provinces assigned ex officio membership in the VRA to different village cadres, such as VC members or heads of village small groups (Alper-mann 2009: 404–5). In other words, the line between ‘village representative’ and ‘village official’ was notoriously blurred. Article 23 of the OL Draft clearly states that VC members are to be included in the VRA, but that other ‘village representatives’ should account for at least two- thirds of its total membership. Furthermore, one- third of the seats are reserved for women. A group of experts proposed to further amend this article to include ‘volun-tary participants’ who, combined with village representatives, should make up two- thirds of the VRA meeting’s participants. However, this same group of experts dismissed the women’s quota as a meaningless formality (Xu 2010a).


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The final OL Revision maintained this gender quota but revised the composition of the VRA probably in reaction to such suggestions. According to Article 25, village representatives now have to make up at least a majority of four- fifths (instead of two- thirds). In other words, ex officio members are now in an even smaller minority position when the VRA meets. Moreover, both the draft and the final versions of the law adopt a clause also found in previous provincial legisla-tion stating that the VRA needs to be entrusted by the village assembly before it can take on some of its prerogatives. In this way, the pre- eminent position of the village assembly is further bolstered. Another local innovation adopted first by provincial, now by national law-makers is the so- called ‘village affairs control group’ (cunwu jiandu xiaozu). According to Article 29 of the OL Draft, this organ is composed of members equipped with the necessary administrative and financial knowledge to check the ‘publication system for village affairs’ (cunwu gongkai zhidu) and the village accounts. The members are to be elected along the same lines as the VC. Although the control group is not a completely new organ (due to its local roots), this proposal has drawn some sharp criticism from expert commentators who see this as an unnecessary duplication of functions already assigned to other actors. In other words, critics suggest that more emphasis should be placed on perfect-ing the already- existing structures and vesting them with real authority rather than inventing new, half- baked organizations (Xu 2010a). In fact, this complaint echoes Kenneth Lieberthal’s (1995: 183) much earlier assessment of the Chinese polity that it is littered with organizations that lack real authority. It is thus quite conceivable that this new control mechanism will just add another layer of formal supervision without real teeth. Its standing may be further weakened by the fact that the final OL Revision does not mention a regular election (xuanju) of its members according to VC election rules, but only states that they are nom-inated and selected (tuixuan, a less formal procedure). Nevertheless, the control group does possess a chance to develop into some-thing more, and not everyone commented negatively on it. In fact, Yu Jianrong argued for a similar organ (called jianweihui) to be adopted when revising the Organic Law (Yu 2010b: 76). Most important in this respect is that its members are allowed to participate in VC meetings in a non- voting capacity. Thus, they can observe and keep abreast of decision- making in the village. Moreover, as mentioned above, this control group chairs the annual ‘democratic appraisal’ of VC members according to the final OL Revision. To sum up, the revised version of the Organic Law does contain a number of improvements in procedures regarding election, recall and control of cadre power. So at least in theory the law has the potential to help alleviate social ten-sions in the countryside.

ConclusionThis chapter proposed to take a longer- term perspective on the evolution of village governance norms to assess the shifting agendas of China’s central political


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leadership. It is obviously too early to judge how the new version of the most important legislation on village self- administration will fare. But it is a fair guess that the usual shortcomings and implementation gaps will present themselves. Moreover, each previous Organic Law promulgated by the centre has not just caused shirking, but has also led to innovative adaptations and further institutional improvements in village governance. This is the other side of what is to be expected. In fact, as the discussion above has shown, many of the novel clauses contain mechanisms for rural governance that were pioneered in local practice and first codified at the provincial level. Thus, village self- administration is an inter-esting example of the particularly Chinese process of policy experimentation (Heilmann 2008). Beyond that, the analysis above can shed some light on the directions in which national leaders want village governance to evolve – more pointedly, whether they are attempting to create a paradigm shift or simply to muddle through. In order to answer this question, we need to take a step back from the intricate (some might say arcane) details of the legislation and examine the bigger picture. Only then can we see that national lawmakers are in fact attempting to strengthen village voters vis- à-vis elected officials. The revised Organic Law makes it easier to conduct clean and fair elections with respect to voter registration and the use of proxies. Less vote- buying should offer some protection against the mix of money and power lamented by some observers of rural China. More importantly, several ways to oust elected but unworthy officials have recently been introduced or made more feasible. This is especially true for the recall vote and annual appraisals. And in post- election administration, a higher standing of the village assembly – now easier to convene and able to revoke VC and VRA decisions – as well as a strengthening of the non- official element in VRAs them-selves may serve to increase effective supervision. Likewise, the village affairs control groups, though derided by some Chinese commentators, may serve as useful additional monitoring instruments. However, all of the above points to a gradual change rather than to a shift in the overall paradigm. This assessment is further underscored when we look at the CCP’s position in village governance, which still retains its old form. If any-thing, the leadership of the party branch and village party secretary has been revamped, not reduced. The party has made it unmistakably clear that village self- administration in China is to develop only under its leadership. This being the case, we should not expect – though some analysts do – that village adminis-trative reforms will cut the Gordian knot of challenges to rural governance (Xin 2012). Rather, more comprehensive packages of rural policy initiatives, such as the abolishing of agricultural taxes and fees as well as the programme to ‘build a new socialist countryside’ look more promising (Göbel 2011; Thøgersen 2011). The latter initiative includes village self- administration as a crucial component but is far from being restricted to it. If these initiatives can be made to work hand in glove, then a gradual paradigm shift leading to a resolution of rural China’s problems is possible. If not, then muddling through is at least an attractive second- best option. Unfortunately, as the central leadership in the first half of


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2011 discussed improvements and innovations in ‘social management’ (shehui guanli) that herald a tightening of controls over society (Lin and Wu 2011), this second option looks more likely to come to pass. Following Shue’s (forthcom-ing) analysis, the most recent round of village governance reforms can be seen as nothing more than the next step in a long- term effort of the state to impose its modernist agenda in the Chinese countryside – the success of this agenda being far from assured.

Note1 This section draws on Alpermann (2010).

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Village governance reforms in China: Paradigm shift or muddling through?

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