Village Elections in China: Cooperation between the State and the Peasantry

Village elections, as a policy response to developmental problems in rural China in the 1980s, were not designed to promote democracy in China. The process of village elections, however, has served as a new form of cooperation between the state and the peasantry over the last decade. To understand why an authoritarian regime introduced an electoral process to its countryside and why this electoral process of village elections has served as a new form of cooperation between the state and the peasantry over the last decade, we should try to understand where the congruence between the state and the peasantry was in this form of cooperation, what the role of the state was in this process, and what the implications of this electoral process for democracy were in China. The process of village elections might eventually have a benign result that was not originally envisioned by its sponsor, but little progress has been made in that direction over the last decade. Putting village elections in such perspective, this paper examines the economic, political and democratic dimensions of this electoral process of village elections as a new form of cooperation between the state and the peasantry.