Thread: Democracy in China

Since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the People's Republic of China has undergone a slow process of increasing democratization. Before the death of Mao, elections featured no choice and votes where public. Furthermore, elections only occured at the township level, which higher congresses elected by the members of the congresses below them. The system was reformed in 1979, allowing direct elections to county congresses, the adoption of the secret ballot, and more candidates being listed on the ballot then are needed to fill the posts (allowing for a limited degree of choice).
A critical breakthough in China's path to democracy has been the creation of village committees. Began on an experimental basis in 1987 as an attempt by the central government to curb corruption amongst local officials after the decollectivazation of farms and restore the authority of the central government in the face of growing unrest, local elections proved to be successful enough that the national government amended the law in 1998 to make local village elections manditory. The central government also began to mandate the process of the local elections, which had largely left to the villages uneder the 1987 law. All elections must be held using a secret ballot, the votes must be counted openly, and the results announced immediately. While the elections lack many fundmental democratic features (candidates may run as independents, but may not organize into political parties) and the national government has cautioned against the law being viewed as part of a long-term process, the bill marks a great leap forward for democractization in China.
While the prospect of eventual democracy in China appears to be increasing likely, the transformation of China from the current regime to one of a more democratic nature is a process that will take . The role of traditional values in Chinese society are the single greatest road-block in the path to a more open society. Surveys from the mid-1990s show low support for democratic values (20-30%, with support in urban areas higher than in the countryside) and a strong support of the Confucian view of government being controlled by virtuous leaders (70% of those polled in the PRC agreed with this view, while only 30% of respondants in Hong Kong answered in the affirmative). China has no history of democratic rule and traditional values emphasize over and above the individual. This is not to discount the ability of the Chinese to form a more democratic system of goverment, as democracy has taken root in several East Asian societies that have also had similar political histories to China.
The future of Chinese political life is contingent upon the continuing success of neoliberal economic reforms. In the post-"Iron Rice Bowl" world, the legitmacy of the Communist Party rests on the contiunation of the economic progress that has occured over the last two decades. The ability of Communist Party to sustain the massive increases in the standard of living that have occured over the past two decades (GDP per capita rose from 460 to 6,972 yuans from 1980 to 2000) has made people much more accepting of the socialist market economy replacing state-ran enterprise. The failure of these reforms could bolster pressures in Chinese society that are currently controlable such as the inability of young men to find wives (due to the one-child policy) and the large gap in wealth between those in urban and rural areas.

The final edition is saved on another computer and I didn't feel like digging it out from over there. The errors were fixed.