6 To vote or not to vote in village
elections

Village democracy or village self-government (cunmin zizhi) has been a much talked-about subject both inside and outside China since the 1980s. It is one of a handful of topics that the Chinese government is eager to publicize and the Western media and academia are interested to investigate. The Chinese government, often through the Ministry of Civil Affairs, has organized and allowed foreign journalists, social scientists, dignitaries, diplomats and political, academic, and social organizations (such as the US International Republican Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Carter Center, and the National Committee on US–China Relations) to go to Chinese rural areas to observe village self-government and elections. There is no doubt the Chinese government intends to showcase village self-government to the world, in order to demonstrate that this new development will be the beginning of the long-delayed democratic transition in the most populous country in the world. (During his visit to China in 1998, former US President Clinton paid a special visit to a village outside Xian to talk about, among other things, village democracy in China with some selected villagers.)

Village self-government has taken twenty years to evolve. This practice can be traced back to the late 1970s, when the ‘household responsibility’ system replaced the people's communes as the new economic system in the Chinese countryside. The old political structure of communes, production brigades (shengchan dadui), and production teams (shengchan xiaodui) became obsolete in favor of the new economic system. Like the household responsibility system that first emerged independently of governmental forces and support, villagers’ committees (VCs) (cunmin weiyuanhui), the new form of village self-government that replaced the production brigade, were initially spontaneous creations at the grassroots level. The first were created, without prior government approval, in two counties in Guangxi province.¹ The early VCs were responsible only for managing neighborhood affairs.² Later on, they became a comprehensive administrative organization in many rural areas. Article III of the 1982 constitution established the VC as ‘a mass-based self-governing body at the grassroots level’ in rural areas. It also stipulated that the chair, the deputy chair and other members of the VC be elected by villagers.³

China completed the transformation of its post-Mao rural political structure between 1983 and 1985. Communes were replaced by townships, production brigades transformed into villages, and production teams changed into villagers’ small groups.⁴ Even though elections of VC members were held in many places, these elections were conducted in an ad hoc fashion and many VC members were still appointed from above. Endorsed by Peng Zhen, then Chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC), NPC's Standing Committee in 1987 passed the Organic Law of the Villagers’ Committee, which on a trial basis provided for election as the means to choose VC officials.⁵ The Organic Law was permanently adopted in 1998.⁶

There has been little agreement on the exact percentage of Chinese villages that have held VC elections, let alone competitive elections, since the adoption of the 1987 Organic Law. The reported figures of Chinese villages that have experienced varying degrees of open elections range from one third to 50 percent.⁷ The assessment of the nature and result of VC elections is also mixed. Some studies argue that the exercise of village elections has made Chinese peasants more aware of their political rights and serves as, in Peng Zhen's words, a ‘democratic training course’ for Chinese peasants.⁸ VC elections have also made it possible to replace corrupt and unpopular leaders⁹ and made village cadres more accountable and responsive.¹⁰ It is also believed by some that such elections have the potential, accidentally or not, to lead to wider democratization in China, such as elections of town/township and county government officials.¹¹ Yet some other studies have directly questioned the meaningfulness of village elections in China.¹² Qinglian He, a well-known critic of Chinese economic and political reforms, argues that village elections have revived traditional Chinese evil forces in the countryside, such as clans and hooligans, and that the elections have been made a convenient vehicle for these forces to come to power and dominate Chinese rural politics.¹³

The literature on political participation in Chinese villages since the 1990s has gone beyond the mere description of electoral processes and procedures. Two empirical studies in particular have shed important light on the modes and motivations of political participation in the Chinese countryside. On the basis of a four-county survey, Jennings studied five types of political participation among Chinese peasants: attending local party meetings, working with others in solving local problems, writing letters to officials to offer opinions or suggestions, contacting local people's congress deputies, and attending all-village meetings.¹⁴ He found that autonomous political participation among Chinese peasants is higher than commonly expected; Chinese rural participants are just as rational and strategic as their western counterparts as far as their participatory goals and modes are concerned; and individual traits and contextual factors affect participation levels in similar ways seen in democratic countries.¹⁵ In another study based on a nationwide survey conducted between December 1990 and January 1991, Shi found that those who tended to vote in VC elections were people who had stronger internal efficacy, supported democratic values, and wanted to punish corrupt officials.¹⁶ Shi's findings conform more to Western voting behavior literature and suggest that many elections in China are more meaningful than many think. This study is also based on an empirical random survey.

Just how many Chinese peasants vote in VC elections? The figures vary significantly from one report to the next. The Chinese press routinely reports voter turnout in these elections at above 90 percent. In a document prepared by the Taicang (county-status city in southern Jiangsu) government, a 99.4 percent voter turnout in VC elections held in the city in 1997 was reported.¹⁷ Shi reported that about 76 percent of the people in his 1990–1 survey participated in the semi-competitive elections of local work unit leaders (VC elections included) even though the figure does not differentiate between unit leaders’ elections in urban and rural areas.¹⁸

However, voter turnout in VC elections in China is a tricky issue. In a normal and standard democratic election, voters have to go to the voting booth personally to cast their votes on the principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ Yet, neither the old nor the new Organic Law governing VC elections specifies VC election's voting methods, which are left to the provincial people's congress to decide. According to the Implementation of Organic Law of Villagers’ Committees passed by Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress in June 1994, village voters in Jiangsu can either go personally to the central voting place to cast their vote or authorize an eligible voter to cast a proxy vote if they cannot go themselves, and a voter can only cast proxy votes for up to three other eligible voters.¹⁹ Yet no specific regulations were provided on how the authorization should be carried out, and no written authorization was required. This voting method can be easily abused and lead to voting fraud. Even though proxy votes are allowed, they are not encouraged. Election officials usually try their best to mobilize peasants to go to the central polling station to listen to the candidates’ speeches and to vote. As low peasant voter turnout is viewed as an indicator of a lack of effort on the part of village party officials. Nevertheless, proxy votes have inflated the officially reported voter turnout and made it highly unreliable.

In my study I adopted a more accurate and reliable method to count voter turnout; that is, I counted only people who actually went to the central polling station (zhongxin toupiaozhan) to cast their votes. Using this method, the survey finds much lower peasant voter turnout in VC elections in rural southern Jiangsu province. Approximately half (48 percent) of the eligible voters in the survey reported that they actually went to the central polling station to cast their votes, whereas 42 percent did not. I believe that if a voter was seriously interested in VC elections, he or she would go personally to the central polling station to cast his or her vote since a proxy vote is highly undependable and unreliable under current voting regulations. Casting votes personally at the central polling station is especially important, as the only official campaigning by the candidates are the short speeches they give before voting begins. In other words, my method is a more accurate measurement of voters’ interest in VC elections among Jiangsu peasants.

Could low voter turnout in this study result from the possibility that a large number of respondents worked elsewhere during the period of VC elections? I do not believe this scenario is likely for two reasons. First, the survey area is well known for the development of village enterprises and rural industrialization. Peasants usually work in village and local factories. Only around 3 percent of the rural labor force work outside their locale.²⁰ Owing to a shortage of workers, there has been a large influx of peasants from other parts of the province and other provinces to work in village enterprises in southern Jiangsu. A common practice by village officials, who are eager to show to the town/township government that they are trying their best to hold successful VC elections, is to shut down village enterprises on election day so resident peasant workers can go to cast their votes. Second, the high response rate in the survey provides good evidence that mobility could not be a factor for the low voter turnout in VC elections in the areas under this study.

We can tentatively derive two observations from these voter turnout findings. First, given the fanfare about VC elections in China, it is astonishing to find that only half of the eligible voters in Sunan rural areas bothered to cast their votes in person in VC elections. An obvious and interesting question to ask is why a large percentage of Chinese villagers in this study failed to show up for the elections. Who are most likely and not likely to participate in VC elections? It does appear that such a low voter turnout casts serious doubt on the nature and the perceived utility of VC elections in the areas under this study. Second, such a low voter turnout in VC elections in rural southern Jiangsu province also indicates that voting in them is not compulsory and that villagers do have more freedom to abstain because of a lack or an absence of punishment for not voting. This makes it possible and more likely for the villagers to use nonvoting as a way of expression, such as a protest vote or a vote of disinterest in VC elections. I intend to find out from the following analysis the subjective factors that motivate people to vote or not to vote in VC elections.

Constraints and choices in VC elections in Jiangsu

Prior to the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, two models were developed to conceptualize constrained and limited political participation among Soviet citizens. One is the mobilization model, which argues that mass political participation in the former Soviet Union was pervasive yet meaningless because participation was primarily mobilized and enforced.²¹ As a result, the mobilization model implies that ‘differences in individual motivation could have little bearing on rates of political involvement’ and ‘a person's interest in politics or sense of personal efficacy or values would simply not matter’.²²

By contrast, the disengagement model suggests that political participation was not so pervasive in the former Soviet Union, and many Soviet citizens had more options, including nonparticipation, in their involvement in both conventional and nonconventional political activities.²³ Implied in this model is that individual political values and orientations did play a role in what political activities Soviet citizens chose in which to participate and how actively they became involved. Indeed, Rasma Karklins found that nonvoting was used by many Soviet citizens as a protest vote and that the nonvoters in the former Soviet Union tended to be young, better educated, more interested in public affairs, more critical of the Soviet political system, and more likely to be engaged in unsanctioned cultural and political behavior.²⁴ Indeed, in noncompetitive elections in authoritarian societies such as the former Soviet Union, many people chose not to vote to gain expressive value of protesting against the existing regime.²⁵ Given the institutional constraints in VC elections in Jiangsu, I suspect that the disengagement model explains the low voter turnout and interest in southern Jiangsu's VC elections.

Rural voters in Jiangsu have the choice of choosing from a list of multiple candidates (who usually have the blessing of the authorities) or crossing out names of candidates they do not like; and voters are free to abstain from voting in the elections without punishment. Yet measured by standards of genuine democracy, VC elections in Jiangsu can best be described as semi-competitive or semi-democratic. According to Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, semi-democratic systems are seen in countries where

the effective power of elected officials is so limited, or political party competition is so restricted, or the freedom and fairness of elections so compromised that electoral outcomes, while competitive, still deviate significantly from popular preferences; and/or where civil and political liberties are so limited that some political orientations and interests are unable to organize.²⁶

VC elections in Jiangsu are very much limited by the official institutional control of local government, procedural deficiencies, a limited choice of candidates, a lack or absence of electoral campaigns, the dominance of the Chinese Communist Party during the electoral process and after, and the town/township government's interference in VC affairs.

Official institutional control

Since the very beginning, VC elections in most villages in Jiangsu have been carried out in a top-down campaign fashion. Village elections have been treated as a ‘political task’ by the CCP, especially since 1994 when the CCP, in a Central Committee circular, called upon party branches at all levels to carry out the Organic Law.²⁷ The Jiangsu provincial government has taken an active role in guiding and controlling the whole process of VC elections and village self-government. For each round of elections since the early 1990s, the provincial government would first hold provincial-level preparation meetings to study the guidelines, constraints, and limits issued by the provincial government. During the election period, which usually lasts about three to four weeks, VC elections become the center of governmental work at the county, township and village levels. Key county and township officials are directly involved in the election process. Many are sent to specific villages to supervise the election process. The election organizing committee at county and township levels, which is usually chaired by the party secretary, consists of personnel from various departments and sections of county and township governments.²⁸

There are two serious procedural constraints in Jiangsu's VC elections. The first concerns the nominating process. Forming alternative political parties is banned in China. The VC candidate nominating process is therefore totally under the one-party system. The criteria for being a candidate are specific. Other than meeting all the conditions for being an eligible voter, a candidate has to be someone who is not too old and in good health. A candidate should also be knowledgeable about major state laws and policies (which is a key constraint favoring incumbent VC members). And more importantly, a candidate should be of good moral standing: a tricky criterion since authorities can use this to disqualify politically undesirable or unacceptable candidates.²⁹ By these criteria the provincial government obviously attempts to set limitations on the candidates nominated.

The final slate of candidates is usually decided by the village election committee headed by the village Communist Party secretary. The village party committee holds meetings to discuss possible candidates in the upcoming election and reaches tacit agreement on its favored choices in consultation with the township government. If there is some ‘gap’ between the candidates favored by the party and the popular candidates, the party is expected to ‘persuade’ the villagers to accept the party-favored candidates. One of the criteria used to judge whether a nominating process is successful or not is whether the party-favored candidates also happen to be the candidates favored by the villagers.³⁰ According to an internal document of Taicang Municipal Government, 99.7 percent of the officially listed VC head candidates were elected in 1997.³¹

A second limitation in the electoral process is the candidate constraint on electoral campaigns. In any democratic election, candidates are allowed and expected to publicize their positions on issues and their governing agenda to the prospective voters in an open and free fashion. In other words, they need to ‘sell’ themselves to their electorate to gain support and votes. However, in Jiangsu's VC elections, the final list of candidates is officially announced only three days before the general election. Election regulations forbid open campaigning and soliciting of votes in those three days prior to the election. The only official campaigning that a candidate is allowed to conduct is the making of a short speech in front of the villagers minutes before voting on election day. The absence of candidate electioneering in Jiangsu significantly reduces VC election competitiveness.

Party domination during and after the village election

A fundamental limitation in VC elections in Jiangsu is the Communist Party's dominating role. In a proclamation on VC election rules and regulations issued by the Jiangsu Provincial People's Congress, it is clearly stated that VC elections should be organized under the Communist Party's leadership. The village party committee secretary heads the village election organizing committee in each village. A more detrimental limitation to the power of VCs in China is that the VC is subordinate to the village party committee and party secretary. The village party secretary is the so-called first hand, or the most powerful cadre in the village, whereas the VC chair is usually the ‘second hand’ or even the ‘third hand’ in some cases. In other words, even if the VC chair is elected in a perfectly democratic fashion, the election only elects a deputy to the village party secretary who is not subject to popular and democratic election and confirmation. In fact, the VC chair is almost always a member of the village party committee (and he or she usually holds the deputy party secretary position in village party committees). All major decisions have to be discussed and decided by the village party committee first before adoption and implementation by the VC.³² This power structure parallels that of the party–government inter-locking structure from the central state level down to the town/township level. The village party secretary in Jiangsu also controls village finances by serving concurrently as chairman of the village economic cooperative. Any major village expense has to be approved and signed by the party secretary.

Interference from the town/township government

The power and authority of the VC are circumscribed not only by the village party committee but also by higher governmental authorities, especially town/township government. According to the Chinese constitution, the lowest level of government in the PRC is the town/township government. Article II of the Organic Law stipulates that ‘the villages’ committee is a self-governing, self-educational and self-serving mass organization,’ and Article IV of the Organic Law further says that the town/township government provides ‘guidance, support and assistance’ to the VC. In reality, the VC is still mainly perceived and treated as a subordinate body to town/township government. One of the strongest resistances to the introduction of VC elections came from town/township government.³³ Even though the VC is officially a self-governing mass organization, it is expected to carry out state policies in rural areas. Town/township government routinely conveys or issues policy directives to VCs. Such a relationship poses a major barrier to a meaningful and effective self-government and democracy in Jiangsu's rural areas.

Jiangsu's town/township government controls the VC officials through a peculiar institutional arrangement of financial reward. Since village officials (including both VC members and village party committee members) are not state employees, they do not receive state salaries. However, they are compensated for their work with monies from fees collected from the villagers, income from village-owned enterprises, payment from renting village land, and so on. Usually, three village officials (normally the village party committee secretary, the VC chair, and the village accountant in Jiangsu) receive full monetary compensation. Ironically, the salary or monetary compensation standard for village officials is not decided by the villagers who contribute the money but rather by the town/township government based upon the local economic development level and work performance of the village officials. Such a payment structure is said to prevent possible corrupt financial abuses by village officials. This arrangement obviously makes it easier for the town/township government to control village officials’ behavior. Under such a system, village officials are more likely to be responsive and accountable to the town/township government and officials than to the villagers, since the latter control their purses. After the election, the villagers have very little institutional control over the VC.

As a result of the government limitations and constraints in VC elections, rural voters in Jiangsu are left with only two choices. One choice is to have the freedom to cross out names of candidates on their ballot under the deng e xuan ju system (whereby the number of final candidates is the same as positions on the VC) or to choose from a list of multiple candidates sanitized by the village party committee and the town/township government under the cha e xuan ju system (whereby there is at least one more name on the ballot than the available positions on the VC). The other choice available to rural voters in Jiangsu is to abstain from the VC election without penalty or punishment. In pre-reform elections, people were coerced by the regime to vote;³⁴ in the new VC elections, villagers are given a choice between voting and nonvoting. In other words, voters in VC elections in Jiangsu may choose nonvoting as a means of protesting. Given the constraints and choices in VC elections in Jiangsu, who tends to vote or not to vote? This question is the focus of the following analysis.

Subjective motivations in VC elections in Jiangsu

Applying a combination of the rational-choice model and the institutional approach to the constraints and choices in Jiangsu's VC elections, I specify the following relationships between Jiangsu's peasant voters’ subjective orientations on one hand and their voting behaviors in VC elections on the other. I expect the following variables to have an impact on voters’ decisions to participate in VC elections in the southern Jiangsu countryside.

Internal efficacy

In a normal competitive democracy, voters with higher degrees of internal efficacy tend to vote more in elections because they tend to have ‘the feelings that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political process’.³⁵ Are those who have higher degrees of confidence in their ability to influence politics (internal efficacy) more likely to vote in VC elections in southern Jiangsu? Tianjian Shi argues that in China internal efficacy motivates people to vote in semi-competitive elections because people with strong internal efficacy use this ‘imperfect’ electoral system to achieve the goal of ‘political liberalization.’³⁶ I suspect, however, that due to the current constraining electoral regime in Jiangsu (as well as in many other parts of rural China), peasants who have higher levels of internal political efficacy (namely people who believe in their own ability to influence politics) are more likely to stay away from the ballot booth because of their suspicion that VC elections are not so meaningful in changing politics and policies in their areas. In fact, I believe it is very likely that these people use the nonvoting option as a political act or as a protest vote to express dissatisfaction with the existing deficient VC election system. The variable of political efficacy used in this analysis is the same as used in the preceding chapters.

Democratic orientation

In established democracies, those who are more supportive of democratic values tend to participate in democratic elections. In constrained elections such as Jiangsu's VC elections, I argue that support for democracy is negatively correlated with the likelihood of voting in the constrained VC elections. This is because democracy supporters tend to consider constrained elections incompatible with their democratic beliefs, and hence tend to abstain from these elections.³⁷

In this study, I did not intend to use a more comprehensive measure of democratic orientation and relate it to the peasants’ participation in VC elections. Instead, I used a more specific question to gauge how people felt about more complete democracy in southern Jiangsu's countryside: ‘If it were possible, should the village party secretary also be elected by the villagers?’ I felt this question dealt directly with one main institutional constraint in VC elections in Jiangsu as well as in the rest of China. As discussed earlier, a major institutional barrier to a more complete democratic system in the Chinese rural areas is that the village party secretary exercises the real power in the village, yet he or she is not popularly elected by the villagers under existing electoral laws. As Huntington argues, a political system can only be democratic when ‘its most powerful collective decision makers are selected through fair, honest, and periodic elections.’³⁸ This democratic principle has been severely compromised by the fact that the popularly elected VC chair is only a deputy to the village party secretary.

I believe that those who support more complete democracy (that is, they support the popular and democratic elections of the village party secretary) may be more alienated by the current power arrangement between the village party secretary and the VC chairman since it is incompatible with true democratic practice. Because of the VC chair's limited power, democratic supporters tend to see VC elections as less meaningful and that they are just ‘going through [the formalities]’ (zou xing shi). Since voting in the VC election is no longer mandatory, it is reasonable to expect the democratic supporters to behave as rational actors and to express their displeasure with the party secretary-VC chair power arrangement by abstaining from elections. The survey shows that an overwhelming majority of rural residents (83 percent) support popular and democratic elections of village party secretaries.

Sentiment toward local corruption

One of the achievements of the adoption of the VC election is supposed to be the removal of unpopular and corrupt village leaders by villagers.³⁹ I do not necessarily dispute that the open and free nominations of VC election candidates (hai xuan) may provide voters with the potential opportunity to remove unpopular and corrupt village cadres. However, since Jiangsu's nomination process has been primarily controlled by the town/ township government and village party committees, and hai xuan was only experimented with in some villages in 1999, VC elections are less likely to be perceived as an effective way to replace corrupt village leaders. The most common and effective way for Chinese citizens, including farmers, to reveal and punish corrupt officials remains the anonymous reporting of corruption and mistreatment cases or lodging official complaints to higher governmental authorities at various levels. For example, about 98 percent of official corruption cases between 1995 and 2000 in China where a successful conviction was achieved resulted from clues provided by individuals to governmental authorities.⁴⁰ Violent protests and demonstrations by Chinese peasants have been increasingly common in recent years. The protests are seen as a way of bringing the grievances of the peasants to the attention of governmental officials and the general public.⁴¹

On the basis of the above, I expect that sentiment toward local corruption is not significantly related to voting or nonvoting in Jiangsu's VC elections. I used two questions in the survey to find out what people thought about local corruption: ‘What kind of job have your village leaders done with regard to establishing a clean government?’, and ‘To your knowledge, is it a serious problem by village cadres in your locality to use public funds for private dining and receptions?’ Table 5.5 in Chapter 5 shows that a large number of people in our survey were dissatisfied with their village leaders and corruption. Over 50 percent of the people in our survey believed that their village officials had not done well in establishing clean government. And over 45 percent of peasants reported that village officials spending public money on private dining and receptions was either a very serious or serious problem.

Level of attention to public affairs

Extensive literature exists on the importance of political interest as psychological involvement in politics and public affairs in analyzing political participation in western and developing countries⁴² and the former Soviet Union.⁴³ For instance, in their study of political participation in seven nations Verba and his associates argue that, given that other conditions are equal, those who are more interested in politics out-participate those who are apathetic to politics.⁴⁴

It is also well documented in many studies in the United States (see Chapter 5) that political awareness or political interest is associated with support for the prevailing regime's norms and values.⁴⁵ For example, Geddes and Zaller argue that citizens’ exposure to political communications tend to promote their support for the ‘mainstream’ political norms embedded in those communications.⁴⁶ Put differently, those who are more aware of politics are more likely to be susceptible to the influence of the prevailing norms and values in the political system and thus are more likely to support the existing political regime. Bahry and Silver in their political participation study of the former Soviet Union, found that people who had higher levels of political interest tended to participate in regime-supported conventional political activities such as voting in soviet elections.⁴⁷ With regards to my survey, I believe that those who follow public affairs closely tend to be more supportive of the Chinese government and are more obedient and deferential to authority. Another survey study of Beijing urban residents by Jie Chen shows that those who were more interested in politics voted more in local congress elections.⁴⁸ Therefore, I hypothesize that those who follow public (both state and local) affairs closely in rural Jiangsu tend to vote more in government-sponsored VC elections. I use the same variable of political interest that was used in Chapter 4 as the independent variable of attention paid to public affairs in the following analysis.

Life satisfaction

In previous studies of political activism in other countries (including the former Soviet Union) personal life satisfaction has been defined as individuals’ ‘subjective perceptions’ of their life improvement or fulfillment.⁴⁹ Based on findings from the former Soviet Union and China,⁵⁰ I expect that life satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) influenced people's decision to vote in Jiangsu's VC elections. I believe that those who were more satisfied with their life were more likely ‘to go with the flow’ and, thus, more inclined to vote in VC elections and show tacit support for the current political regime and maintain the status quo. The same variable of life satisfaction that was used in the previous chapters is also used here.

Multivariate analysis

What factors determine whether peasants vote in Jiangsu's VC elections? Table 6.1 presents a logistical model to capture the effects of the subjective orientations on voting behavior in VC elections in rural southern Jiangsu province. To assess whether these subjective orientations affect voting behavior independently of some objective (in a relative sense) factors, I also include such demographic variables as gender, age, and education. Overall, the results from this multivariate analysis confirm the earlier theoretical expectations.

As expected, internal efficacy is strongly related to peasants’ decisions to cast votes or not in VC elections. Specifically, people with high degrees of internal efficacy (peasants who are more confident of their capability to influence public affairs) tended to shy away from or were less likely to vote in VC elections. The main reason, I believe, is that they were dissatisfied with the constraints and limitations in VC elections and used nonvoting in these elections as a choice of registering passive protest against the existing electoral system.

Also, as expected, people who supported a more complete democracy in village self-government were less likely to vote in southern Jiangsu's VC elections. Specifically, the survey respondents who believed that the village party secretary (who is the real source of power in the village) should also be democratically elected by the whole village tended to avoid VC elections. The plausible reason explaining their likely absence from elections, as mentioned earlier, is they saw VC elections as a less meaningful exercise. In other words, they were less willing to participate in what they might perceive as a politically legitimizing event instead of a real democratic election.

Table 6.1 Logistic regression of voter participation in villagers’ committee elections

Note

*p<0.05; **p<0.01

Additionally, in contrast to Shi's study, the multivariate analyses of subjective motivations for southern Jiangsu peasant voters’ participation in VC elections show that a person's anti-corruption sentiment had no independent effect on voting in those elections. This finding implies that whether or not people chose to vote in the VC election did not have much to do with their intent to punish or remove unpopular and corrupt officials. This is because these elections might not be considered an effective means to fight official corruption owing to limitations, constraints, and deficiencies in the current electoral system of Jiangsu's VC elections.

It was also found from the multivariate analyses that those who were more attentive to public affairs and were more satisfied with their lives were more likely to vote in the elections. Both findings are consistent with another Beijing urban resident study in the local people's congress elections – another kind of semi-competitive election in China.⁵¹ The findings imply that people who are more aware of public affairs are more likely to be supporters of the political regime in China and, therefore, are more likely to participate in the government-sponsored VC elections. It is also very reasonable to expect people who are satisfied with their life to go along with the status quo by participating in the officially organized elections rather than passively challenging the authorities by not voting as a means of protest.

Among the demographic attributes factored in, age and education were significantly related to voting or nonvoting in VC elections in the survey area, while gender did not seem to be a significant factor. I believe both findings are consistent with the logic of the other findings. If participation in the state-sponsored limited and constrained VC election is a function of internal efficacy and democratic orientation, we can only expect that older people and the less educated tend to cooperate with the establishment rather than challenge the system. It is well documented in the literature that there is a strong correlation between age, political behavior, and orientation. The positive relationship between age and the likelihood of voting in VC elections in my study could result from both the ‘aging effect’ and the ‘generational effect’. In studying the political attitude and behavior in the former Soviet Union, scholars find that older people tend to be more conservative and status quo oriented than the young.⁵² Some China scholars have documented that younger generations are more likely than the older generations to be critical of the establishment system because of their distinctive socialization experiences.⁵³

As for the educational effect, education has been widely used by political scientists as a predictor of political attitudes and behavior.⁵⁴ Many scholars of communist countries have found that, regardless of the official ideological norms indoctrinated in schools and workplaces, the better educated tend to be more critical of the authoritarian political system and supportive of democratic change.⁵⁵ As one scholar has noted: ‘Advanced education is likely to be intellectually liberating and to induce a more critical stance toward official dogma.’⁵⁶ Similar findings and arguments have been found in China.⁵⁷

Findings on the profile of peasant voters in Jiangsu's VC elections seem to better fit the disengagement model, which was used to analyze constrained elections in the former Soviet Union. People who were more likely to participate in these elections tended to have lower levels of internal efficacy and democratic orientation, follow state and local public affairs, be relatively satisfied with their life, and be older, and have lower education levels. The findings from my multivariate analyses have at least two implications. First, the voting behavioral pattern among Jiangsu peasant voters indicates that VC election constraints and limitations do constitute a major barrier and disincentive for a significant number of peasants who believe in democratic values and have stronger political efficacy to participate in these elections. Jiangsu's VC elections are still what Bahry and Silver call ‘compliant political activity’⁵⁸ and nonvoting in these elections is used by many people as a passive protest against the circumscribed electoral systems in Jiangsu, and can be considered ‘unconventional political activism.’ Therefore, the elimination of electoral constraints or the adoption of a freer and more democratic electoral system would, in all probability, increase VC election voter turnout and participation.

Second, the current political regime in China can still draw passive or active support and compliance from people who are more susceptible to governmental influence, satisfied with their life, older, and have less education. Even though the Chinese government does not use strong-armed measures to coerce people to vote in elections such as the VC elections, it still uses ‘persuasion’ to get people to the voting booth. Conceivably it is much easier to persuade older, less educated, more compliant, and satisfied peasants to vote in limited and constrained VC elections than otherwise.

Even though this study was conducted in rural areas in one region in Jiangsu and the descriptive findings are not intended to be generalized to the rest of the Chinese countryside, I do believe that the findings are theoretically and empirically heuristic for rural participation in VC elections in China. I suspect that VC elections in most parts of rural China are somewhat constrained and limited, and voters in those areas are likely to have similar voting behavior to those of the Jiangsu peasants. Obviously, more comparative studies are needed in order to have a better and more comprehensive understanding of Chinese peasants’ voting behavior in village elections.