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| Delegates applaud as Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives for the opening session of China's National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in this March 5 file photo. AP-Yonhap |
"The voters didn't get a chance to find us, because the police found us first," Ye Jinghuan said of her third attempt to take part in China's electoral process.
The dissident had sought to get elected as a delegate representing people at a township or county level, the first stage in a process that will ultimately select the representatives for the People's Congress, the country's top lawmaking body.
These delegates, who select higher level representatives, are the only ones to be directly elected within the Chinese system once every five years, which President Xi Jinping has characterized as a "whole process democracy."
Ye, 69, decided to stand with 13 other independent candidates in Beijing, who said they had not been able to find anyone to represent their views and published a joint statement in which they promised to speak on behalf of residents.
But Ye said that soon afterwards they were blocked from leaving their homes, followed and harassed by police and found their mobile phone services had been disrupted.
On Nov. 1 they decided to stop their campaign because of fears for their safety ― a repeat, Ye says, of her previous attempts to stand in 2011 and 2016.
Her experience comes at a time when the Chinese authorities are promoting whole process democracy ― which they say also involves public feedback and negotiations ― as a system that is more effective and better allows people to express their interests and demands.
These efforts have gone into overdrive in the run-up to the Democracy Summit Joe Biden is hosting next week, and on Saturday morning, the State Council, the country's cabinet, is due to publish a white paper called China: Democracy That Works.
Biden's summit will be attended by more than 100 countries ― but not China.
Earlier this week Le Yucheng, vice-minister of foreign affairs, told a panel organized by the China Public Diplomacy Association: "China's democracy is not a show or formality, it truly makes people happy and improves their well-being. In the past decades, more than 800 million Chinese have been lifted out of abject poverty."
Le said people were able to participate extensively in state affairs because they voted for their local People's Congress delegates, and could provide feedback to the government.
He said that since the lawmaking process was overhauled in 2012, more than 1.1 million public comments had been collected on 187 draft laws.
However, these comments are not usually made public and it is not clear how much of this feedback is considered when drafting final legislation.
New legislation introduced this year that prohibited for-profit private tutoring seemed to have had little public consultation, as the ban shocked almost everyone and sent education companies into collapse. An estimated 3 to 4 million people in the sector could be out of jobs, according to data from the Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education.
David Bandurski, the co-director of the research program China Media Project, said that Beijing saw rhetoric about democracy as one of the final hurdles it had to overcome now that it has become militarily and economically strong.
By shifting the conversation on democracy, China's leaders hoped to neutralize criticism internationally and also shore up their legitimacy at home, he said, adding: "The Chinese leadership believes that China's international ambitions are being constantly thwarted by criticisms on the grounds of democracy and human rights."
He said there are ways in which the governance system can be deliberative but to call it democratic was a complete mirage.
"Now, more than ever, the emphasis is on not just the leadership of the party, which has the membership of less than 7 per cent of the population, but on Xi as an insuperable strongman," he said.
Larry Diamond, a leading American political scientist, argued in a 2004 lecture that democracy can be defined by four key elements: free and fair elections that can choose and replace the government, active citizen participation in politics and civic life, protection of human rights and rule of law that applies equally to all citizens.
But in the election of local representatives, some voters have complained they were not given the chance to cast their vote or were pressured into voting for certain candidates.
One woman in Shanghai posted on Weibo on November 16 that a polling worker had made her leave without allowing her to cast a vote. She added that it looked as if the workers had been filling in the ballot papers themselves, adding: "They didn't even give me a ballot so I could take part in the formality and feel a sense of ritual."
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| Li Hairong, center front, and Guo Qizeng, right, obscured, failed to save their homes from being demolished. SCMP |
Another social media user said he had been bombarded with phone calls for days on end asking him to vote for the daughter of the village Communist Party secretary, even after he said he was not going to vote.
One student in the eastern city of Nanjing, who gave his surname as Chen, said he had been confused by the vote to pick his local district's delegates Wednesday.
He shared screen captures of what appeared to be messages from a faculty coordinator telling students when and where the vote was taking place, and stressing that attendance was necessary due to the political importance of the event.
But Chen said a student representative had privately told him he did not need to attend because he was a local Nanjing resident.
"A local Nanjinger doesn't need to attend the election for the Nanjing People's Congress. What were they playing at?" he asked.
In the end he did not vote, and suspects his vote had been given to someone else because a classmate told him that ballots had been cast on behalf of three absentee Nanjing voters in the time slot reserved for his faculty.
"I don't know what to say, none of us knew who to vote for before the election, or who was responsible for the process," Chen said when asked what he thought of the concept of whole process democracy.
Li Hairong, one of the 14 independents whose attempts to stand in Beijing were thwarted, said she had decided to stand along with a neighbor, Guo Qizeng, because their homes in Shibalidian, on the outskirts of capital, were at risk of being forcibly demolished.
But officials started demolishing houses in their village after they announced their campaign, and both Li and Guo's homes were torn down on November 12. Li said she had sought refuge at a police station, but officers did nothing to stop the demolitions.
"The local delegates to the People's Congress took part in devising the demolition plan for the village. You decided on the policy to tear down my house, but how come I know nothing about it? Li said.
"I tried really hard to find my local delegate but I couldn't find them. Our voices were never passed onto the upper levels of government."
Ye, her fellow independent, said she did not know what "whole process democracy" meant but it was not the version of democracy that she had studied and understood as representing universal values.
"I'll just say that if I put the words whole process democracy on a T-shirt, and wear it outside, I would 100 per cent be charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble," she said, referring to the catch-all crime often used to muzzle dissent in China.
