More independents running in China Monday, 12 September 2011 01:30

 By Keith B Richburg

All across China, scores of ordinary citizens are challenging the Communist Party’s ironclad grip on political life, launching full-blown campaigns outside its grasp for local “people’s congresses.”

The local congresses - the lowest rung in China’s government structure, equivalent to neighbourhood commissions - are relatively powerless bodies in the complex system that the party maintains as a formal display of grass-roots participation. Until now, they have been filled almost entirely with candidates from the party, or people endorsed by it.

But the unprecedented number of candidates stepping forward without the party’s backing for elections that begin this fall marks a potential watershed in China’s political evolution, testing the leadership’s professed commitment to allowing democracy to develop from the bottom up.

“Under the law, Chinese people have the right to stand in these elections and to vote, but in reality, China is far away from democracy,” said Zhang Kai, a Beijing lawyer and activist in an unauthorised Christian church who is running as an independent.

“Right now, China is experiencing a peaceful transformation,” Zhang said, explaining how this year’s candidates, from many different backgrounds, demonstrate a growing political consciousness and a popular hunger for more say in how the Chinese are governed.

A few candidates not affiliated with the Communist Party have run in past elections for local congresses, but they received virtually no media coverage and few votes. This time around, the independents - academics, journalists, students, bloggers, lawyers and farmers - are attracting widespread publicity and mounting serious campaigns, using social media and live Internet broadcasts.

The Communist Party seems to be grappling to find a coherent response. “Some are cheering from the sidelines,” said Elizabeth Economy, a China expert with the Council on Foreign Relations. “There are certainly others who view this as very threatening.”

The wide swath of candidates, Economy said, “shows the breadth of interest in real reform.” But as to whether the party will allow the independent candidates to prevail, or whether they could affect the system from inside if they did, she and other analysts sounded far more cautious.

The party has reacted harshly to some independent candidates. Some have been harassed by security officials and placed under house arrest. Others report being pressured to drop their candidacies. Xu Yan, a candidate in Hongzhou city, in Zhejiang province, said he quit his job after his employer was visited several times by tax authorities. Zhang Kai, the Beijing lawyer, said he has been stopped from traveling abroad.

The independents have a powerful new tool on their side: weibo, the hugely popular Twitter-like Chinese microblogging sites that have allowed candidates to announce their intentions, lay out their positions on issues in their neighborhoods and reach potential supporters. Many have their own Web sites, and Xu Yan has put out a new five-minute video each week, talking about his ideas on local issues, such as parking problems; he has produced 10 such videos, a seeming first in China.

There have even been the campaign rituals familiar in any Western democracy - such as Xu Chunliu, an independent candidate in Beijing, who is passing out campaign T-shirts, another apparent first for a Chinese election.

“People don’t have any formal political institutions,” said Li Fan, director of the World and China Institute, a think tank that has prepared a guidebook for independent candidates. “These local people’s congresses are the people’s only channel to fight for their rights.”

So far, Li said, more than 100 independents have announced their intentions through microblogs. He expects many more will enter the races once the rules in each district are made public. Li said he encourages independents to maintain a low profile to avoid attracting too much government scrutiny. Still, the number already announcing their plans, and their high level of online campaigning, “means more and more people are trying to enter the political system. Now the system is closed. It’s run by the party elite. If you don’t open it, people will try to break in.”

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