Grass-roots democracy tests idealists' skills
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A new round of local people's congress elections at the county and township levels ended Monday. This year, for the first time, China's rural residents enjoyed the same level of representations as their urban counterparts.
It is a big political event in China, but only a few local media outlets covered it. New media, including microblog and BBS, which enjoys more freedom of speech, also paid little attention to it, despite the frequent calls for democracy online.
The conflict probably reveals the paradox of China's current political opinions: Many called for democracy but few are willing to practice it at the grass-roots level.
I was born in a small county in the southern part of China. My hometown has got richer in the last few years, and its grass-roots politics more complicated. Every time I go home, I hear about loopholes in the law being exploited, and some stunningly ugly deals around the local elections.
Yet, I still believe that China is moving slowly along the road to democracy.
The Chinese people are looking for high quality candidates and a population of educated voters, public supervision of corruption, an end to the power networks in local villages, and the implementation of democratic principles, but getting these will be a long, troublesome, disordered, and painful process.
Maybe it won't take 300 years, as it did in the West, but even 30 years won't be enough.
Besides the time and patience, China also needs a body of democratic talent. China's elites should be going down to work at the local level to practice their ideals rather than staying in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Instead, they spend more time as visiting scholars in the West than visiting China's villages.
Obviously, there is a huge chasm between the democratic ideal and reality. Only practice can make up the distance. We need to start at the local level and with ourselves.
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