3/10/99

Contact: Sharon Storm, Hoover Inst, (650) 723-1454

China elections conference held at Hoover Institution

Larry Diamond recalls the emotions he experienced when he observed village elections in China last March.
"What struck me when I was there was euphoria that open participation was happening," said Diamond, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an expert on developing democracies. "[But] upon reflection after I returned, I remembered how embryonic the whole process still is."

The fragile nature of China's local elections, and whether those elections will eventually lead to real democracy, was the subject of a two-day conference, "Elections in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China: Does Limited Democracy Lead to Democracy?" at the Hoover Institution March 4 and 5.

Organized by Diamond and Ramon Myers, Hoover Institution senior fellow and curator of the institution's East Asia Collection, the conference brought together scholars from the West and the Far East to consider the evolution of Taiwan's democratic system of government and the current political situations in Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China.

The case of Taiwan

In one session, Myers and Linda Chao, a Hoover research fellow, discussed "How Elections Became Democratic in Taiwan Under Martial Law."

Chao and Myers, authors of The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan, long have studied Taiwan's 38 years under martial law (1949­87) and are the authors of a 1997 Hoover Institution essay that detailed the first nationwide democratic election in China's history. Held in Taiwan on March 23, 1996, that election brought into office Lee Teng-hui and Lien Chan, politicians representing the ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT), as president and premier, respectively.

In their book, Chao and Myers explained that Taiwan was introduced to an electoral democracy in 1950 when the KMT authorized limited local elections in villages and townships. In January 1951, voters elected officials representing predetermined districts. Voters thereafter returned to the polls every two years to elect district and city council members.

By the 1970s, much of Taiwan's population was enjoying economic prosperity and the benefits of compulsory public education. Voter turnout in local elections increased, and people who supported the dangwai, or "politicians outside the KMT," became more vocal, according to Chao and Myers. The dangwai increased their seats in local assemblies for the first time in 1972.

"The years between 1977 and 1987 produced an emergence of the opposition," Myers said. "Voters were increasingly voting for opposition candidates, and non-ruling parties were able to acquire more and more votes. There was a mobilization by voters."

The KMT, however, maintained some control over local governments. Shelly Rigger, professor of political science at Davidson College, said that "the KMT built a firewall between the elections and the decision-making members of the state. The ruling party used local elections to maintain a KMT-controlled state. If major decisions were made behind a firewall, it made it safe [for KMT politicians] to give some concessions to the opposition."

John Fu-sheng Hsieh, director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of South Carolina and co-author of the paper "Local Elections and Democratization in Taiwan," added that "when the KMT fared well in [some] local elections, it gave them an assurance they would not lose everything [to opposition parties]."

One reason the KMT continues to rule nationally is that stability is important to the Taiwanese, Hsieh said. "Maintaining a national identity is important in Taiwan. [At the national level], no party will defeat the KMT."

Hong Kong elections

Local elections in Hong Kong appear to be at the point where Taiwan's elections were several years ago, scholars said in another conference session.

Lynn T. White III, professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, described Hong Kong as a pseudo-democracy because "elected representatives can't rule as elected."

While Hong Kong voters directly elect some legislators, they don't have much authority, said Richard Baum, a political scientist from UCLA and author of the paper "Democracy Deformed: Hong Kong's 1998 Legislative Elections ­ and Beyond."

"If a member of the legislature introduces a bill that the chief executive doesn't like, he doesn't have to sign it," Baum said. "It's one thing to elect legislators; it's another thing to empower them. There are many roadblocks in the way of constitutional democracy."

When the British government controlled Hong Kong, it delayed introducing elections there until the 1980s, by which time China had inherited British fears about what would happen if democracy came to Hong Kong. This point was brought up by Suzanne Pepper, a professor at the Universities Service Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and author of the paper "Elections, Political Development and Basic Law Government: The Hong Kong System in Search of a Political Form."

"London was never willing to trust Hong Kong-based merchants or the Chinese majority," Pepper said. "There were misconceptions that full independence was the only justification for self-government, and that politics and democracy were destabilizing forces. After 140 years, when Britain introduced the elected element into Hong Kong politics, China had absorbed Britain's colonial fear about democratic politics."

The scholars agreed that, since Hong Kong's return to Chinese authority in July 1997, the country's political future remains unclear.

"Constitutions take years to develop, meaning that promises for the future don't have a calendar," White said.

Diamond in China

Based on his observations of local elections last March inside Mainland China, Diamond compared China's political situation to other countries that he described as semi-democratic. Although the countries hold elections, their impact is different from those carried out in full democracies, he explained during a session on "Limited Elections and the Development of Democracy."

"There are many pseudo-democracies in the world, [including] Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Jordan, Morocco and Zimbabwe," Diamond said. "Elections must be free, fair and meaningful. Free elections allow voters to cast secret ballots; fair elections are administered by a competent authority; and meaningful elections confer real decision-making authority."

Some of the conference papers are scheduled for print in The China Quarterly.

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BY SHARON STORM