Meritocratic Democracy
A New Governance Model in Rural China
Direct elections for Chinese villages have been conducted since 1988, and within 2 decades, more than 99% of 950,000 villages have introduced the idea in their governance systems. Despite such fast progression, direct elections of self-governing village committees in China pose a number of questions: is it a tangible step towards democracy? How do they impact power dynamics among the various stakeholders? Have changes in access to power affected the ways in which power is exercised? Former Asia Fellow Di You traces the emergence of “hybrid governance model” in which political meritocracy (village’s party secretary selected by the CCP through civil service examinations and other competitive procedures) helps guide the direct elections of village committees and she discusses some implications for China’s rural governance.
Written by: Di You, Ash Center Asia Fellow 206–2017
Self-governance in the form of electoral democracy began in China’s countryside in the late 1980s. By 2008, more than 99 percent of Chinese villages had introduced direct elections, and this type of electoral democracy has become a hallmark of Chinese rural governance. Despite considerable progress in rural China in the past 30 years, such serious challenges as persistent poverty and weak management systems threaten to impede further development. In recent years, a new political model that marries democracy with political meritocracy has emerged in many villages. This new model has made progress in poverty alleviation, public participation, and management of public affairs. As a successful paradigm, it is looking to spread to more and more villages.
In the past three decades, the old governance model in rural China is a democratic model under two main local organizations: the village committee and the village party branch. According to the Organic Law of the Villagers Committees of the People’s Republic of China, the village committee, which is the basic autonomous body in each Chinese village, is elected by all legally qualified villagers to manage public affairs in the local community. The village party branch, the basic level organization of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), plays the role of guiding and supporting the village committee in conducting self-governance on behalf of all villagers. In short, the key to the basic structure of the old rural governance model is the cooperation between those “two committees.”
The new model adds to the complexity of the old one with two new mechanisms: the first secretary and the village council. The first secretary is the party cadre whom the higher-ups appoint to aid the undeveloped countryside. In general, the first secretaries are selected, evaluated and promoted in a system of political meritocracy with at least two rounds of evaluations. The first round is the competitive civil service examination, which enables cadres to obtain positions in the government. Some of them come from top universities and some others already have good performance as student cadres. Before their first secretary appointments, most of them had to pass a second evaluation of their work.
The village council is an autonomous organization originally formed spontaneously among villagers at the grassroots level before being popularized and formally recognized across Chinese villages. It is a relatively meritocratic organization based on one person, one vote. Many provinces, including Anhui, Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hebei, and Heilongjiang, have village councils as part of the natural villages. Now, most village councils in natural villages or village groups are elected by “one person, one vote” through a similar process as the village committee elections. Normally, a village council consists of five to nine members, with a chairman at the top. Research shows that most council members are local elites who are part of the “five elderlies”: elder party members, elder village cadres, elder exemplary citizens, elder teachers, and elder soldiers. At a villagers’ meeting, local residents have the right to elect council members who are willing and able to promote the public good and help the poor. Some members of the village council are incumbent village cadres in the local village committee who play a coordinating role in the communication between the village council and the village committee. In summary, the village council is a new secondary organization that enables villagers to self-govern.
Now, this new governance model consists of the village council, the first secretary, the village committee, and the party branch. As both communist party members and upper-level political officials, the first secretaries are mainly responsible for targeted poverty alleviation and strengthening party organizations. As a secondary self-governance organization, the village council manages rural public affairs and plays an ever-increasing role coordinating with and supervising the village committee.
How did this new model arise? From my observation, in the past 10 years, several reasons account for this change. First, accelerated urbanization in China resulted in a shortage of human resources in the country, which has led to increased civic participation. Second, as more villages merge into townships all over the country, village committees have become understaffed and thus more concentrated geographically, resulting in less effective management. Third, a large rural population in poverty is an obstacle to China’s development goal of “building a moderately prosperous society” by 2020. Therefore, both the central and local governments are seeking new means of village governance, resulting in this new model that combines meritocracy in the first secretary and direct electoral democracy in village committees.
In my study, I chose two Chinese villages under this new mixed model of governance as samples to analyze how it influenced the local community. The first village is Village S in County T in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. With harsh natural conditions and a shortage of human resources in the region, Village S used to suffer from poverty and poor governance. Now it has become a model village in rural governance with cleaner appearance, better infrastructure, and improved civic participation. The good reputation is largely due to the village’s outstanding performance in public governance and poverty alleviation. According to local residents, the cooperation of the village council and the first secretary made a dramatic contribution to the improvement of Village S. The village council in Village S was originally organized voluntarily by some local elites. Mobilized by those public-minded people, most villagers began to participate more in public affairs, including building roads, cleaning up, building infrastructure, and engaging in recreational activities. Before 2015, Village S has gradually achieved orderly self-governance under the cooperation between the village council and the “two committees”. However, the poverty issue hadn’t been effectively solved until the first secretary, a cadre from the upper level of the government, arrived with his working group in 2015. By capitalizing on the financial support, the social resources and the intellectual power, the first secretary made a poverty alleviation plan by developing sericulture along with neighboring villages. The plan was put into effective practice with the support of the “two committees” and the local village councils. Through the village council, villagers were united and their enthusiasm in public participation became quite elevated. The coordinating and connective role the village council played also helped further the secretary’s efforts in the village. With such effort, Village S was lifted out of poverty in 2015.
The second case comes from Village X in County F of Guizhou Province. My work discusses the new model’s impact on hunting for talents and the building of local party organizations. In this village, the village council is called the Democratic Management Council. It helps deal with conflicts in public affairs and promotes public participation. The first secretary, a graduate of a top university in China, cooperates with members of the Democratic Management Council to improve public life. Additionally, he observes and searches for local talent in the Democratic Management Council. Usually, local elites of exemplary people, doctors, soldiers, incumbent local cadres gain more trust from villagers and are more likely to be elected by villagers as members of the village council. The first secretary helps identify people who perform well in public management and recommend them to join the communist party. In this respect, the village council resembles a platform for potential talents. The previous chairman of the village council was elected by the villagers as the vice director of the village committee in the next election.
To sum up, in the mixed governance model, the first secretary is the sole carrier of political meritocracy and the village council represents electoral democracy. Effective cooperation between the two could happen under appropriate conditions for better local governance. Additionally, the rural hybrid system reveals that political meritocracy, as a supplement, can reinforce electoral democracy in an effective way at the grassroots level.
At the practical level, political meritocracy helps cure the deficiency of local democracy and helps support local governance. Political meritocracy transfers large numbers of political talents with material and social resources to carry out national policies in the countryside. The positive influence of the first secretary policy, as well as villagers’ satisfaction, has been shown in ample research and studies. Local democratic management also benefits from working with cadres and their working groups. Although there are still imperfections in the current practice, the overall village economies and local organizations have been substantially improving with the introduction of the hybrid governance model.
At the theoretical level, political meritocracy has a heavier responsibility for the deficiency of local democracy. In China’s Confucian tradition, the government takes great obligation for the well-being of the people, and such thinking is still relevant when contemplating governance in China today. Powerful and extensive political action is only possibly driven by a powerful central government for which the great responsibility for the society is a core feature. Also, political leaders selected by meritocratic systems are regarded as political talents with superior ability and high responsibility. When local democracy faces internal and external challenges, political meritocracy is able and obligated to help. Therefore, we can see that political meritocracy not only works at China central level but also functions at the local level, so a hybrid system is desirable for rural China.
Di You is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Philosophy from the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University. Her research interests include political meritocracy, democracy, and China’s traditional political thoughts. Ms. You has completed research on political meritocracy in liberalism and conservatism. During her fellowship here at the Ash Center, she conducted research on the democratic meritocracy in contemporary China.
