China Amends Election Law

China's National People's Congress (NPC) is now discussing the NPC Election Law Amendment Act (draft). One of the most significant contents of the election law amendment is in the implementation of one vote each for rural and urban folk in the election of NPC representatives. This election law amendment, when passed will allow people in rural and urban districts having equal right for election. This will be the most important political reform measure taken by China in recent years.

The amended election law will not only enhance the status of farmers in the political life of China, it will also move China one step forward to pave the cornerstone for democratic political development.

Adjustment and Restriction
Since the urban population in China is much lower than the population in rural districts. As such, the election law enacted by China in 1953 has made adjustment and restriction governing the ratio of total representatives of NPC coming from rural and urban population. Since 1995 until today, China has maintained its NPC representatives from urban districts and rural districts in the ratio of 4:1. In other words, the representatives of urban NPC are four times more than the NPC representatives coming from the rural district.

Now the Chinese authority is ready to amend the electoral law on the ground that in the past 15 years, the urban and rural population structure has undergone big changes. The level of nationwide literacy and education, especially the education and literacy in rural areas has markedly improved. In addition, the Chinese national leaders also feel that at nationwide, the conscious for the people in wanting to have a democratic judiciary system in place has also notably increased in strength.

Socialist Democratic Political Environment
Under all these situations, the authority feels that the implementation of a new election law that can allow China to have same ratio of NPC representatives coming from rural and urban districts can boost the mobilization of creativity and pro-activeness of all the people in China. . This is China's urbanization process. This is based on the practical need to coordinate urban and rural development. This is also an inevitable requirement for China to move along the development of a socialist democratic political environment.

However, since the Chinese authority has defined this round of amendment to election law as the party's self-improvement effort toward democratic politics, we can only expect that no matter how the composition of the NPC representatives will change, one thing that will absolutely remain unchanged is that two-thirds majority of the NPC representatives will have to come from members of the Communist Party of China. However, it remains a fact that overall the education level of the farming population is still low as compared with the urban population.

Development of Democratic Politics
Moreover, the importance for the country to have a proper legislature structure as perceived by the farming households is also not very strong. This was one of the considerations why the Chinese authority did not want to implement the "one person one vote" electoral system in the past. At present stage, the Chinese authority has finally acknowledged that the major obstacle that has long troubled the development of democratic politics in China has been eliminated and it is ready to amend the election law.

Nevertheless, for China to truly and honestly implement direct election system and to allow the people to use their votes in hands to elect the people representatives of their choice from district to central level, it is still an unachievable dream for the people in China for the time being.