Quote:
Originally Posted by LostInTranslation
There are still no direct elections at the county, provincial or presidential levels. However, direct elections are implemented at the village level already. This was unthought of in the past. Political reform takes time, and needs a lot more caution to proceed than the economic reform, particularly since China is facing a lot of internal challenges and certainly not the most friendly international environment nowadays.
|
The disheartening thing is that I heard of several cases on the media in which candidates hired hooligans or gangsters to assault their rivals in the villiage level elections. They regard the position of the villiage leader as a lucrative means to take bribes. With the process of urbanization and development of rural tourism, the land (which is of collective ownership in name) value is soaring in some parts of the countryside. It is reported that some villiage leaders are relinquishing the land which the villiager are cultivating at ridculously low prices, while giving the villiagers scanty compensation. The media call this as "selling one's birthright at a bowl of lentil stew" and ask "who get the stew?"
China has a long way to go to attain to democracy.