In a crucial test case for the credibility of the widely-heralded program of grassroots village elections in China, China Labour Bulletin has learned of a flagrant attempt by government and Party officials in a rural county of Ningbo municipality to prevent villagers from exercising their legally guaranteed right to conduct impeachment proceedings against the deputy chairman of their elected village committee and to elect a new official of their choice.

On the evening of 20 February 2004, according to eye-witness accounts given to CLB, as some 200 residents of Dazhu village, in Ninghai County, Ningbo, Zhejiang, gathered in their village hall to elect a new village chief, over 100 government officials and armed police stormed into the hall and violently broke up the meeting, pushing villagers aside and destroying ballot boxes as they dispersed the gathering. The villagers had been prepared for this violent crackdown and did not react or respond with violence; instead they quietly left the building. The February 20 confrontation followed a meeting held by the villagers one week earlier, in which they had successfully impeached and ousted the previous head of the village committee.

The introduction of village elections in China in the late 1980s was publicized as a major breakthrough in increasing government transparency and as demonstrating willingness by the Chinese authorities to allow villagers and rural workers to have a voice in running village affairs. The program, now officially said to have been extended to most rural parts of China, has been marred by frequent reports of unfair and rigged elections, the arrest and detention of elected officials who oppose and reveal corruption, and the suppression of village movements to elect independent candidates of whom the local authorities disapprove.

The Dazhu villagers’ struggle to hold their elected officials accountable under the law

On 11 December 2003, some 200 Dazhu villagers (well over half of the village’s registered voters) handed in a formal request to the village committee and the Changjie township government, asking for a meeting to be convened to impeach and dismiss their village committee’s deputy chairman, Zhu Yuanchao. (The actual chairman had been absent for a protracted period, and Zhu had been serving as his replacement.) In their petition letter, the Dazhu villagers accused Zhu of abuse of power, corruption, a failure to develop the village’s economy, and misspending public funds on his personal lifestyle. According to the Organic Law of the PRC on Villagers’ Committees (1998), the villagers’ request for an impeachment hearing was an entirely valid and lawful one. However, it was rejected out of hand by the head of the township government’s political section, Chen Haiyan.

Confident of the legality of their efforts, in January and February 2004 the villagers again formally requested the government to convene an official village meeting to dismiss Zhu Yuanchao. After encountering much official obstruction and intimidation, the villagers eventually decided to proceed with the impeachment independently and without the involvement of the local government. On the evening of 13 February 2004, having obtained a copy of key provincial regulations that set out the legal procedure for the impeachment of village heads and permit villagers to convene such meetings without the need for local government approval, the villagers held an open meeting and voted overwhelmingly to dismiss their former deputy chairman for incompetence and abuse of power. They also elected a Villagers’ Election Committee to prepare for a new election. On 17 February, after learning of the villagers’ meeting, the town government sent officials to the village and announced that the vote was “legally invalid”.

Despite this, the villagers continued to plan for an election of a new village chief to take place on 20 February. They consulted two independent experts – Professor Yu Depeng from Ningbo University’s Faculty of Law, and Professor Fan Yi, an elected representative in the Ningbo People’s Congress and vice-chairman of the Ningbo People’s Political Consultative Conference – and both experts advised the villagers that they were acting fully within their legal rights. Nonetheless, Ninghai County and township officials interviewed by CLB informed us that the planned Dazhu village election could not take place without prior government approval, and they threatened to forcibly disperse any attempt by the villagers to go ahead with it. Local police also informed CLB that they would “take action” if they believed the election could cause “instability”.

On the afternoon of 20 February, several hours before the election, CLB talked to Zhu Liangye, a candidate standing for the post of new Village Chairman. He informed us that in a meeting the previous day, the county government had decided that the election was to be prevented at all costs and that no media coverage was to be allowed. However, Zhu Liangye added that he was confident that local officials would not take any action contravening national regulations protecting the villagers’ rights to hold elections. CLB also spoke to one of the election committee members, Yu Hegen, who stated that in the event of violence the villagers had agreed to disperse peacefully and to refuse to respond in kind to any violent provocation from the authorities.

The election meeting began at 6.30pm and by 7pm it was over – violently broken up by around 30 armed police officers wearing steel helmets and accompanied by approximately 70 local and county-level officials. Shortly after the villagers had dispersed, CLB again spoke to Yu Hegen, the village election committee member who told us that at 7pm, the police, with batons and shields, had first driven away two observers invited by the villagers to witness the events and the likely crackdown: a Xinhua News Agency bureau chief from Ningbo, and Professor Yu Depeng from Ningbo University. Town government officials then rushed into the hall and smashed up the ballot boxes. According to eyewitnesses, the villagers peacefully dispersed and made no attempt to confront or resist the armed police. Villagers later informed CLB that they remain determined to exercise their right to a free and fairly elected Village Chief and are planning to reconvene the election at a later date.

A test case for Chinese villagers' rights

Village elections, seen as one of the most significant political reforms implemented since 1989, are often depicted by Chinese government officials and foreign observers as a stepping-stone towards the wider democratisation of China’s rural areas. The Organic Law of the PRC on Villagers’ Committees, introduced in trial form in 1987 and formally promulgated in a much expanded form in 1998, states that village leaders are to be directly elected by the villagers themselves for a term of three years. (Elected village leaders are not technically government officials but are meant to act as a means of communication between the government and the villagers, reporting popular opinion and proposals to the government, helping to maintain social order, and mediating in local disputes.) Events such as those occurring in Dazhu village last week cast major doubt on the belief that village elections are examples of true grassroots democracy, and instead reveal how strongly committed local governments remain to keeping firm control over village affairs.

China Labour Bulletin calls upon the Chinese authorities to fully support the rights of villagers not only to hold independent village elections, but also to lawfully impeach, dismiss and replace any elected village leaders who turn out to be corrupt or incompetent. The Changjie Township government should respect the rights of the Dazhu villagers to hold new elections and must refrain from any further attempts to forcibly repress their efforts to do so. We believe that there can be no real progress towards genuine village democracy in China if the villagers’ legally protected rights to impeach and replace their elected officials continue, as occurred in Dazhu Village on 20 February, to be arbitrarily denied and trampled upon by the higher authorities. Under both international standards and China’s own laws, the integrity of an electoral system requires not just the right to vote and to stand for office, but also the right to vote officials out of office and – as an ultimate sanction and safeguard – the right to subject wayward officials to popular impeachment and dismissal. In its continuing efforts to establish village democracy, China’s rural population deserves and requires no less than these basic electoral rights and safeguards.

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