China’s cities have recently been holding elections. Not for the city or even district governments, but for the people who sit on the neighborhood committees (居委会) of urban areas.
What does your local neighborhood committee do?
Good question. The neighborhood committees are responsible for implementing Party policies at a very local level. So in the Cultural Revolution, neighborhood committees helped persecute class enemies, whereas today, they help the police to ensure no criminals loiter in a neigborhood, get involved in legal disputes among residents, and generally act as the eyes, ears, and broomstick of the Party at a micro-level.
However, the rise of the property-owning class may mean that the neighborhood committees become more powerful. Many new property owners become livid when the management companies that are supposed to look after their housing compounds neglect key duties like trash collection, or charge previously-unmentioned fees for parking or central heating. The neighborhood committee is the easiest place to take the complaint, and the most convenient entry point to putting in a formal complaint to the government.
State-owned news agency Xinhua has an article about the neighborhood commitee elections posted on their forum, titled Big happy news! Urban residents start electing their own “allley way presidents”.
Many of the comments about the elections seem to be written by mindless boosters, but there is a fair range of opinions, and Xinhua does not seem to be deleting the negative ones. Below is a small selection. It’s also worth looking at the related posts by English-language Chinese bloggers Bingfeng and Wang Jianshuo, linked below.
From Xinhua’s forum:
– We had this kind of election a few years ago: a fine start and a useless finish. And it’s just a pretence at the lowest levels. Going up one (administrative) level to the selection of local area government… they will never let these officials be elected, forget about it.
– It’s a great start! I hope it can continue?
– I voted two days ago. But to be honest, I didn’t really know any of the candidates. I go to work early every day and return late, I don’t know much about any of the people in our residential area, I don’t even know who they are. So my vote was ignorant….
- Do you know who pays the salaries of the cadres in the neighborhood committees?
– Good! Having a little is better than nothing.
– The first light of dawn!
– Are there any guarantees of this written in the law? If this is just some guidance from above, then isn’t it just a show?
– Look how easy it is to satisfy our people!
– If housing prices don’t go up any more, then I’ll be happy.
– Who cares?
- Bingfeng: Man in Black
- Wang Jianshuo: Democracy in Residential Area