Nationalism and Ethnoregional Identities in China by William Safran

Author:William Safran [Safran, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, General, Political Science, Social Science, Discrimination & Race Relations
ISBN: 9780714644769
Google: 9qSrQgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 2375799
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1998-01-15T11:23:51+00:00

‘Representative’ Bodies

The PRC's statutory legislative organs are commonly ridiculed as ‘rubber stamps’ of decisions already made by the CCP.112 People's congresses do not enjoy the plenary lawmaking powers of liberal democratic parliaments and PRC legislators have only modified, never aborted, government proposals. The rubber stamp image nevertheless is increasingly a caricature.113 Modifications, temporary obstruction and negative votes cast against proposed laws by National People's Congress (NPC) members do impact the shape of the less controversial pieces of legislation.114 Even the tame Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which includes the eight satellite parties, former minority élites and ‘leading personages’, now at least provides feedback to the top CCP leaders.115 Regional CPPCCs may go beyond this role. Even the Tibetan exile leaders have remarked that ‘debate within the [Lhasa] Consultative Conference is much more open, rancorous and divisive than previously believed’.116

While minorities have always been a high percentage of NPC and national CPPCC members, the figures have fluctuated with the viscissitudes of minority policy. The sixth NPC in 1983 enacted a law that requires that at least 12 per cent of NPC members be minorities.117 In recent years, the NPC and national CPPCC figures have stabilized at a level substantially higher than the minority share of the population (see Appendices E and F), a pattern that will persist for the Ninth NPC.118

Other bodies also include minority quotas. Over one-tenth of the CCP Central Committee are minorities (see Appendix G). Minority delegates to the CCP Fifteenth Party Congress in 1997 were 10.7 per cent of the total.119 At the Seventh All-China Federation of Women congress in 1993, 14.3 per cent of delegates were minorities.120 In 1995, of 2,873 model workers commended by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, 8.3 per cent were minorities.121

The least that inclusion of many minority people in the NPC should ensure is that attention be paid to ethnic questions. From 1979 to 1995, the NPC passed some 200 laws, about 40 of which had provisions dealing with ‘ethnic issues’.122 These provisions were largely the work of the NPC Nationalities Committee. The CPPCC Subcommittee of Nationalities and Religions mainly carries out investigations, but its work has also sometimes led to legislation or new regulations.123

Heightened minority representation at lower and presumably more meaningful levels of the political system is also required. The PRC constitution mandates that minorities be represented in urban resident committees (jumin weiyuanhui) and villager committees (chumin weiyuanhui) . The electoral law has a set-aside for minorities in local people's congresses outside the autonomies.124 Xinjiang's regional people's congress in 1995 had 540 members, 357 (66.1 per cent) of whom are minorities and 235 (43.3 per cent) of whom are Uygurs. Among 58 NPC deputies from Xinjiang, 36 (62 per cent) are minorities and 22 (37.9 per cent) are Uygurs, not coincidentally the same percentages of minorities and Uygurs in the Xinjiang population.125 Of 14 chairmen of the regional CPPCC, nine were minorities in 1993.126

The requirement of a large minority presence in legislative bodies provides many minority figures with entrees into the precincts of leadership.

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