Editing Elections in China (section)

====Village chiefs====
{{See also|1998 Chinese local elections}}
After taking power in 1978, [[Deng Xiaoping]] experimented with [[direct democracy]] at the local level.<ref>{{cite news |author=Phillips |first=Michelle |date=July 4, 2011 |title=Chinese independents to challenge Communists in 2012 |url=https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-times-weekly/20110704/281672546581559 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171109134756/https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-times-weekly/20110704/281672546581559 |archive-date=November 9, 2017 |access-date=May 10, 2017 |work=[[The Washington Times]] |publisher=}}</ref> Villages have been traditionally the lowest level of government in China's complicated hierarchy of governance.<ref>{{cite book |author=Lei Xie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IrixxNzEG0oC&pg=PA12 |title=Environmental Activism in China |publisher=Routledge |year=2012 |isbn=9781134020263 |page=12}}</ref> Under the [[Organic Law of Village Committees]], all of China's approximately 1 million villages are expected to hold competitive, direct elections for sub-governmental village committees. A 1998 revision to the law called for improvements in the nominating process and enhanced transparency in village committee administration.<ref>{{cite book |author=Joseph de Rivera |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=keWf3JXYj6oC&pg=PA162 |title=Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace |publisher=Springer |year=2008 |isbn=9780387095752 |page=162}}</ref> The revised law also explicitly transferred the power to nominate candidates to villagers themselves, as opposed to village groups or CCP branches.<ref>{{cite book |author=B. He |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xV6IDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA25 |title=Rural Democracy in China: The Role of Village Elections |publisher=Springer |year=2007 |isbn=9780230607316 |page=25}}</ref>

Many have criticized the locally elected representatives as serving as "rubber stamps", with the local CCP secretaries still holding the ultimate power, though during some eras the Communists have flirted with the idea of potentially allowing some competition.<ref name=":8" /> In the early 1980s, a few southern villages began implementing "Vote for your Chief" policies, in which free elections are intended to be held for the election of a village chief, who holds a lot of power and influence traditionally in rural society.<ref>{{cite book|year=1989|publisher=Longman|author=Gerald Segal|page=34|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MYkNAQAAMAAJ|title=Political and economic encyclopaedia of the Pacific|isbn=9780582051614 }}</ref> Many of these multi-candidate elections<ref>{{cite book |author=Unger |first=Jonathan |author-link=Jonathan Unger |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y5FnIRGDr6gC&pg=PA218 |title=The Transformation of Rural China |publisher=M.E. Sharpe |year=2002 |isbn=9780765605511 |page=218}}</ref> were successful, involving candidate debates, formal platforms, and the initiation of secret ballot boxes.<ref>{{cite book|year=2011|author=Sue Vander Hook |publisher=ABDO|url=https://archive.org/details/communism0000vand|url-access=registration|title=Communism|page=[https://archive.org/details/communism0000vand/page/94 94]|isbn=9781617589478 }}</ref> Initial reforms did not include universal suffrage.<ref>{{cite book |author=de Burgh |first=Hugo |author-link=Hugo de Burgh |url=https://archive.org/details/chinesejournalis0000burg |title=The Chinese Journalist: Mediating Information in the World's Most Populous Country |publisher=Routledge |year=2004 |isbn=9780203323267 |page=[https://archive.org/details/chinesejournalis0000burg/page/77 77] |url-access=registration}}</ref> Such an election comprises usually no more than 2000 voters, and the [[First-past-the-post voting|first-past-the-post]] system is used in determining the winner,{{citation needed|date=May 2017}} with no restriction on political affiliation.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-pLaBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA214|author=Andrew Sancton and Chen Zhenming|page=214|publisher=CRC Press|year=2014|title=Citizen Participation at the Local Level in China and Canada|isbn=9781482228977 }}</ref> The elections, initially held every three years<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LYGvQb_GZFcC&pg=PA1|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2012|title=Participation and Empowerment at the Grassroots: Chinese Village Elections in Perspective|page=1|author=Gunter Schubert and Anna L. Ahlers|isbn=9780739174807 }}</ref> but later changed to five,<ref name=":8" /> are always supervised by a higher level of government, usually by a [[Counties of China|county]]-level government. Part of the reason for these early elections was to shift the responsibility of ensuring good performance and reduced corruption of local leaders from the Chinese bureaucracy to the local villagers.<ref>{{Citation |last=Kennedy |first=John James |title=Rural China: Reform and Resistance |date=2024-08-14 |work=Politics in China |pages=337–366 |editor-last=Joseph |editor-first=William A. |edition=4 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |language=en |doi=10.1093/oso/9780197683200.003.0010 |isbn=978-0-19-768320-0}}</ref>

Since 2018, the central authorities in the CCP officially called for the ''yijiantiao'' ({{lang|zh|一肩挑}}) model, in which the village committees and the CCP village committees to have the same membership, with both led by the CCP village committee secretary.<ref name=":8" /> It announced in a five-year plan in 2018 that one-third of the more than 500,000 "administrative villages" were already following this system, and called for at least half of the village leaderships to follow this system. This had led to tighter vetting of candidates, involving blocking activists and others deemed to transgress political sensitivities.<ref name=":8" />

A 2022 study conducted by the [[American Economic Association]] delved into the implementation of village elections in rural China and the eventual decline in village autonomy in later years. The researchers posited that this decline is linked to bureaucratic capability. As the administrative capacity at the village level strengthens, autocratic figures curtail the influence of elected bodies to reassert control.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Martinez-Bravo |first1=Monica |last2=Padró I Miquel |first2=Gerard |last3=Qian |first3=Nancy |last4=Yao |first4=Yang |date=2022-09-01 |title=The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China |journal=[[American Economic Review]] |language=en |publisher=[[American Economic Association]] |volume=112 |issue=9 |pages=2921–2958 |doi=10.1257/aer.20181249 |issn=0002-8282 |doi-access=free}}</ref>