The Failure of China's Democratic Reforms by Yuan Zaijun;

Author:Yuan, Zaijun;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739170892
Publisher: Lexington Books

Such a trend could be explained by the party organisation’s indication that “deliberative democracy” experiments should be integrated into the local people’s congresses.35 Although He Baogang explained in an interview that the party was to take this opportunity to “revive” the people’s congress system, the party’s other intention—trying to place political experiments of the masses within the institutionalised political system—is clear. In my opinion, to reform the congress system, the most effective method is to open the congress elections to the public.36 Without genuine congress elections, the other kinds of people’s congress reforms lack incentives. For example, to eliminate the elitism in his designed experiments which received criticism, Li Fan suggested that, besides attending the deliberation session (very weak in his designed experiments as shown in the above figure), the congress members should create opportunities by themselves to meet their voters, listen to their opinions and bring them back to the congress session (Zhang Xiaoshan, 2008). However, if the people’s congress members are virtually appointed by the power holders, why would they bother to do that? Even in case 3 which had a deliberation session comparatively stronger than cases 4 and 5, the designer was not allowed to survey the influence of the deliberation session on the people’s congress members (details in note 27). Without statistical evidence, it is difficult to examine how effective the party’s strategy to “revive” the people’s congress system by adopting “deliberative democracy” in and outside the people’s congresses. A news report indicated that the local power holders preferred cases 4 and 5 to case 3 and the reform like cases 4 and 5 will be expanded to other townships of Wenling City (Zhang Xiaoshan, 2008). In the field research, several informants revealed to me that the party secretary of Wenling City went to the townships of Zeguo and Xinhe in 2009 to inspect the “deliberative democracy” experiments. It was the first time he did so in five years. After that, in August 2009, the Wenling City Party Committee wrote in its 2010 work plan that “the participatory budget reform, which should be in the form of the Xinhe experiments (cases 4 and 5), shall be carried out in the congress of other townships in the future.” 37 He Baogang confirmed in an interview that most future budget reform experiments held in Wenling City (in townships other than Zeguo) would probably abandon those scientific methods such as random sampling, full deliberation and questionnaire survey in the deliberation session,38 which would make the citizen deliberation session in these experiments become meaningless and the problem of party-control or elitism would remain unsolved in the following congress session.39

Second, the reform which was held in the congress session of cases 3, 4 and 5 has the following defects:

First, in step 4 of the congress session of cases 4 and 5, the congress presidium decided that most proposals were ineligible so they refused to have them voted in congress (details in note 30). The main reason to invalidate these proposals, according

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