Democratic development of the People's Republic of China

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Cui Naifu on China's Village Committee Elections
China youth Daily, 17 June 1998. The current status of village committee elections in China is closely connected with the Provisional Organic Law of Village Committees adopted by the 23 Session of the Sixth National People's Congress on November 24, 1987. It was a matter of ensuring the rights of the peasants or strengthening the power of the rural officials. The history of the debate that arose in 1987.
Li Peng on Basic-level Democracy, Political Parties, etc.
Peter Seidlitz, of Handelsbatt, interviews China's top legislator, Li Peng, 2 December 1998. The Chinese National People's Congress has no structural reform plans. China has its unique conditions and democracy should be judged by its substance and content, not by the particular form it takes.
In Rural China, Democracy Not All It Seems
By John Pomfret, The Washington Post, 25 August 2000. The debate over a 13-year-old experiment to grant China's farmers a small measure of self-government through election of local leaders revolves around the experiment's real goals—opening the political system or solidifying party control—and what the uneven record of voting in many of China's 1 million villages says about greater reform in Communist Party rule.
Why China's leaders fear full democracy
By Terence Tan, The Straits Times, 17 September 2000. Full-scale democracy is delayed, not out of fear of giving people more freedom, but to a fear that it will lead to a total break-up of the country. Influenced by the experiences of the former USSR and Yugoslavia, the government opposes democratisation as a threat to its control of minority regions such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia, and China's eventual reunification with Taiwan.
Low literacy rate and poverty hinder move
By Terance Tan, The Straits Times, 17 September 2000. Dr Yu Wing Yin, visiting senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute expresses a classic anti-working class argument by saying that democracy was not now possible due to the low literacy rate and its general social and economic backwardness. Poor people in the countryside are more concerned about their everyday life and are probably content to delegate the task of running the country.
Packet of cigarettes can buy rural vote
By Mark O'Neill in Beijing, South China Morning Post, 10 March 2001. Experts say electoral corruption will get worse. The deteriorating situation is caused by poverty and the low calibre of representatives, a weak legal system and concentration of power in the hands of a few officials.
‘Iron Hammer:’ Changing Role of China's Lawmakers
Xinhua, 1 March 2002. Argues that responsive administration is equivalent to democracy: Being a people's congress deputy is a more practical job now than the rubber stamp role of deputies 20 years ago. Deputies are playing an increasingly active role in channeling grassroots problems to relevant government administrations and supervising the settlement of these problems.
Experiencing Growth of Chinese Democracy
China News Digest, 13 March 2002. A village Party chief and NPC deputy for four straight terms tells how he learned over the years to assert his own ideas. According to him, the emancipation of the mind is a gradual process, China's effort over two decades to build democracy and the rule of law is gradually paying off.