Associated Press Worldstream
September 8, 2003

Former U.S. president Carter urges China to enshrine local democracy in its laws

BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER BODEEN; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: BEIJING

Promoting his vision of grass-roots democracy in China, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter urged the country's leadership Monday to adopt a national election law that would standardize voting procedures for village heads.

The soundness of those elections - the only chance for Chinese to exercise direct democracy in a top-down political landscape- vary widely because regions have different rules that are enforced "quite often in a confusing and contradictory manner," Carter said in a speech in Beijing.

Only about 40 percent of elections in China's 700,000 villages fulfill the spirit of a 5-year-old election law, Carter said. Another 40 percent are of "mediocre" quality, while 20 percent don't comply with the law at all.

"It is time now for the 1998 law to be expanded to establish complete and uniform procedures for the entire nature," said Carter, who planned to discuss the issue with Chinese President Hu Jintao later Monday.

Since his presidency ended in 1981, Carter, now 78, has traveled the world promoting democracy and health care both through his personal prestige and his Atlanta-based nonprofit organization, The Carter Center.

China's villages, home to about 75 percent of the country's 1.3 billion people, are the only level of Chinese government that directly elect their leaders.

The effect is isolated from the rest of the system, however, because village leaders have no say in the selection of township officials, the next level above them.

The system is riddled with flaws. The Communist Party, which maintains a monopoly on power, has been accused of rigging elections in some places. Conflicts have arisen between directly elected village heads and appointed party officials who have authority over them. In many cases, rules on candidate qualifications, election procedures and term limits are arbitrary and opaque.

Despite those problems, Carter said five years of cooperation between The Carter Center and China's Ministry of Civil Affairs had produced success by bringing the "great advances of personal democracy to the people of the small villages of China."

Praising China's economic progress and movement toward a "more open society," he said he has seen progress toward greater freedom of worship and more rights for free enterprise.

Wei Ronghan, a Civil Affairs Bureau official from the northern province of Shanxi, said villagers had proved themselves capable of electing good leaders. Fraud, failed election procedures and vote buying, have allowed some unsavory characters to be elected, however, Wei said.

"The Chinese peasant is in a special category. They don't have much education and can't really grasp ideas of foreign policy and major affairs of state," said Wei, winner of an essay contest on village democracy sponsored by The Carter Center.

"However," he said, "peasants do understand very well the affairs of the village and are very clear about who is good and bad among the villagers."

Despite the improving quality of village elections, the Communist Party has shown no sign of relaxing its grip on power. Authorities have detained activists who have tried to organize opposition parties.

There has also been no progress on expanding direct elections to the township level or higher - something Carter has advocated in past but didn't mention in his speech. Carter said the Civil Affairs Ministry was drawing up recommendations to reform township government but gave no details.

Civil Affairs Minister Li Xueju didn't mention any reforms and said the primacy of the party would be key in any expansion of elections.

"Village democracy is a great achievement of the Communist Party," Li said in remarks introducing Carter.