Under Which Conditions Should the Village Elections in China Be Called Democratic? Regional and socio-economic divide behind voting behavior

Eduardo Olivares 

At the end of the 1980s, under the newly implemented Organic Law of the Village Committees, selected villages in the countryside of China had their first elections. Over time, thousands of villages from all the country began a novel process of nomination, campaigning, voting, and implementation of authorities directly elected by peasants. This paper extends the analysis of village surveys, by providing a unique perspective on the Chinese village elections using a national survey. There are important insights that cannot be made using individual village surveys or analyses, particularly concerning the within-country heterogeneity in indicators of the legitimacy of these elections. Findings show that perceptions about the electoral process in China are unevenly distributed through the Eastern, Central, and Western regions, as well as across socio-economic divisions. This paper contributes to the analysis of the ‘electoral dimension’ of village elections in China by contesting the real achievement of the official objective of spreading participation to countryside fellows.