The Present Stage of State Building in China and the 1979 Electoral Law

Abstract

Since the mid-1960s Eastem Europe has realized that the achievement of secularized goals in a modern society requires decentralization of decision-making power and that political stability and economic progress demand in stitutional opportunities for interest articulation. Such considerations emerged in China after the Cultural Revolution when Deng Xiaoping introduced the Four Modemizations as the guiding ideology. To improve the people's living standards and eliminate bureaucratism and cadre privileges, the Chinese reformers appreciated the significance of socialist democracy and restored local elections. A revised Electoral Law was adopted in 1979. But its implementation encountered resistance from conservative cadres and a backward political culture. Elections in China today only play a limited role in mobilization, political education and socialization, integration, legitimation and influence on public policy. Direct elections at the county level and below, however, provide better interest articulation and aggregation and supervision of local governments. The expansion of enterprise autonomy and the division of labour between the Party and state will, hopefully, establish a more direct relationship between elections in basic production units and the people's immediate material interests. This will cultivate a more advanced participatory political culture, and its development will be closely related to reforms of the economic system.