Function 4: Developing political representation

In terms of the fourth function (Figure 3), we can see that in “developing political

representation”, the deputies have bigger achievements than challenges in representing the interests of the state. There are five achievements (Table 9-1): assured voting rights, enhancing political power at grassroots level, development of human rights, oversight role and popularising the laws. Both oversight role (Focus group 4) and development of human rights (Focus group 2) are the two prominent achievements, ranking first in representing the state in the focus groups.

“Oversight role” has a more complex situation. It appears once in both the achievements and the challenges of representing the interests of the state. The deputies believe that they have made achievements in playing an oversight role, because they think that their oversight role

“ultimately supports the work of the government” (Deputy 6) and that “they practice democracy and oversight and support relevant government institutions” (Deputy 23).

According to the deputies in Focus group 2, “development of human rights” means “to improve the income of the local people and the standard of economic development of a

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development rights of the people” (Focus group 2). So in the interviews, the terminology

“development of human rights” became a background and it is invisible because the deputies admit there are more achievements in the implementation of the livelihood projects. The deputies haven’t talked about it directly, but they talked a lot about how to increase the income of the local people and how to promote economic development.

The things I do for the local people are very practical. As I mentioned before, I advise the people to plant kiwi, peach and tea and help them to communicate with buyers. Their income increases every year by about 20,000 RMB (US$3,175) (Deputy 13).

I understand that in order to increase the income from grain, Xijiang must build a standard agricultural water facility. The water facility should involve about 150 households. I have also suggested building roads to link the villages to increase

the villagers’ income and to build more drinking water facilities to improve their

living standard (Deputy 26).

An elite should support local economic development and provide convenience and assistance to resolve sannong issues (development issues related to rural areas, agriculture and farmers). The majority of the loans of our institution aim to resolve those particular issues. As a deputy from a financial agency, I must help

and support vulnerable groups … Besides the construction of road and water facilities I organise funds for other local economic development projects, such fruit tree planting and animal husbandry (Deputy 3).

In terms of “assured voting rights”, the deputies believe that both voting rights of the locals and their own are assured. However, it depends on whether the local people would like to participate in the election or not.

There are open channels for the local people to express their issues and complaints. For example, if a farmer wants to be elected as the director of the VC, he can do so if he is elected by the villagers. We have no limitations on common villagers being elected. If they have sufficient ability, they can participate in the election and be elected as deputy. (Deputy 10)

The election for deputies is not dramatic and competitive, but the deputies believe that it is still meaningful. The candidates include those both seconded to and from the local constituency. While admitting that the voting rights of the people are assured, the deputies

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didn’t shun the reality that the election is a mixture of the arrangement of the organisation

and the participation of the local people.

My success in the election is the will of both the organisation and the local people” and “being elected, I experienced the entire process: I was considered by the organisation; documents were issued by my unit; I was seconded to the constituency; I was nominated by the constituents; I became a deputy candidate; and finally I was elected (Deputy 10).

The organisation dispatches me to the constituency because I am the head of Township People’s Government (TPG) and it knows that I will do things to benefit the people (Deputy 1).

However, it is impossible to realise one’s ideals without the trust of the organisation (zuzhi, 㓴㓷), even if one has great ability and there are certain things that are indispensable to being an elite: the trust of the organisation, the deep trust of people and self-confidence, being responsible and active, and engaging in coordinative service and management (Deputy 2).

To take me as an example, my nomination was at the discretion of the organisation. I was seconded by the organisation to the constituency. The people trust me and elected me deputy (Deputy 17).

I have been directed to be a deputy, more or less, by the organisation (Deputy 9).

The deputies identify “enhancing political power at the grassroots level” as an achievement in

representing the interests of the state. They talk of the roles of Village Party branch (VPB) and Village Committee (VC). Both VPB and VC are political powers officially recognised by the Party committee and the local government at the grassroots level.

All VC members deal with trivial matters such as disputes between neighbours. However, for big issues such as the renovation of unsafe housing and Minimum Subsistence Security System (MSS) we convene meetings that include VC members, the VPB secretary and village representatives (Deputy 4).

I convene a meeting with the TPC deputies and members of the VPB and the VC. We discuss difficulties and issues as well as the next step in the economic development (Deputy 18).

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My ultimate principle is to provide good service for the constituents. I keep better contact with the members of the VC by phone, because the members of the VC represent the will of all the constituents (Deputy 34).

I don’t feel there are any conflicts between the state and the community. However,

there are conflicts among the people. I often do a lot of coordination work to solve these issues with the help of the VC (Deputy 38).

“Popularising the laws” is another achievement recognised by the deputies in representing the interests of the state. From the following two paragraphs, we can see that raising legal awareness of the local people is a by-product of popularising the laws, because this achievement is listed by the deputies in representing the state, rather than in representing the community.

A deputy plays a dual function. On the one hand, s/he promotes the state laws, regulations and policies. S/he must raise the awareness of the people about legal issues and promote fairness and justice in the implementation of government policies (Deputy 10).

Each year, I invite the trained staff of the judicial bureau to visit the locality in order to promote laws, to train the local people and to give them support in legal issues. Doing so has helped the villagers to improve their knowledge about the law as well as their general cultural level (Deputy 7).

The deputies recognise nine challenges in “developing political representation” in representing the interests of the state (Table 4): “improvement of quality and ability of deputies”, “insufficient understanding of representation”, “backward ideas”, “oversight role”,

“low political awareness of the local people”, “lack of understanding of policies by the villagers”, “conflicts and disputes”, “conflict of interests” and “soliciting public opinions”. The most dominant two challenges are “improvement of quality and ability of deputies” and

“insufficient understanding of representation” in developing political representation. Both share the first place in Focus group 4. Deputies’ quality and ability are regarded as the major reasons which limit the performance of the deputies and the LCPC. This challenge is mostly mentioned by professional deputies and those who are incumbent officials. The interviews from two incumbent officials may represent the opinions of these deputies on the issue of the deputies’ ability and quality in general.

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The deputies have their specific functions and responsibilities. They enjoy speaking freely when they represent the people. But the deputies need to strengthen their abilities in order to reflect the people’s voice better. They especially need to strengthen their speaking ability (in a meeting or some specific occasion) on behalf of the people (Deputy 30).

The third difficulty is the quality of the deputies themselves … Every time when I

listen to speeches given by deputies in the LCPC annual meetings, I feel they have many limitations. One may feel that they have broached issues well, but they do not go beyond that. For example, if a deputy finds that a road has been built badly, he or she may not establish a connection with the agriculture issues and water facilities. They just discuss the road issue alone. This shows that their ability to participate in State affairs is compromised. The capacity building of the deputies is a significant issue (Deputy 6).

Some deputies recognize that they themselves have ability issues and they think that they need to improve their own ability to better serve local people as a deputy, such as what one incumbent official who is a township Party secretary (Deputy 23) says:

In addition, I think that, besides the study of political theory as Party secretary, I need to learn from the grassroots level how to serve the local people better as a deputy. Only by continually studying, as a young official and deputy can I improve my ability for such purposes.

And one deputy who is a farmer and owns a small business in her village says:

I conceived the idea of leading the villagers to achieve wealth, although my ability is limited (Deputy 19).

Besides their insufficient understanding of representation based on the representative structure such as gender, ethnicity and social classes (See Chapter Five), the deputies’

“insufficient understanding of representation” include another two aspects: insufficient understanding of representing the interests of the state and insufficient understanding of representing the interests of the constituency. The challenges that the deputies face are that

some deputies don’t understand the two aspects of representation. In the interviews, the

deputies did however, present a clear idea on how to play their roles as to satisfy the demands of both the organisation (the state) and the local people.

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There are certain things that are indispensable to being an elite (a deputy): the trust of the organisation, the deep trust of people and self-confidence, being responsible and active, and engaging in coordinative service and management. If I think that I cannot play these roles, I will resign. However, I am determined to win the trust of the organisation and let it know I can shoulder the responsibility (Deputy 2).

I have been a deputy for several terms. A deputy must be prominent in several ways. He must have a clear idea about the fact that he represents the state. As I have mentioned just now, a deputy must understand the overall situation. He should live up to the requirements of a deputy and have prestige in his community (Deputy 32).

“Backward idea” is identified as a challenge by the deputies to refer to those villagers who do not have “workable ideas” and “they need to change their ideas” (Deputy 14), and the

deputies themselves who need to improve their ideas on development.

Deputies go on fact-finding missions elsewhere and then return to do promotion work among the masses. As I mentioned, I organise deputies in the township to do fact-finding in other areas. I encourage them to understand the ideas of development in other areas (Deputy 16).

“Oversight role” becomes a challenge because the deputies encounter institutional issues

when they supervise the government work in accordance with the law. Some deputies say that the deputies as a whole have insufficient power and support for oversight, and inefficient

enforcement of the laws. They don’t know how to give complete oversight and do not have a

final say.

We have insufficient power of oversight and support for our oversight role …

This is not an issue for any particular individual, but of the whole system. As a result, oversight is difficult to set in place and has barely increased in force. It is

really a difficult issue … The deputies don’t necessarily know what an essential

issue is in any oversight matter.… For example, it could be the people’s livelihood (Deputy 6).

We need to promote the efficient enforcement of the laws, but how? We deputies need to practice daily oversight over the work of yifuliangyuan (the Government,

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the Court and the Procuratorate, аᓌє䲒) and supervise it to act in accordance with the laws and strictly enforce the laws on the basis of justice (Deputy 32) All in all, the role of the deputy has not yet changed. Deputies do not have a final say in matters (paiban, clap the board, ᣽ᶯ). What they can do is to investigate and become familiar with the local situation and comprehensively report what they see and what they hear (Deputy 30).

“Low political awareness of the local people” becomes a challenge for the LCPC deputies in

representing the interests of state towards the community. Due to their low political

awareness, the local people “have few political demands” (Deputy 10). Therefore, the

deputies promote State policies and laws to “improve the political and spiritual consciousness”

(Deputy 33) of the local people.

“Conflicts and disputes” and “conflicts of interests” are two different challenges recognised by the deputies in representing the interests of the state towards the community. The former emphasises the disputes between the functions of local people. The deputies must deal with

the disputes between the local people such as “forest disputes” (Deputy 6, 10, 27, 28 and 29), and “alcohol-related disputes” (Deputy 10). The latter focuses on the tension between the development plans of the state and the local people. Whenever there is a big project such as the establishment of an economic development zone or the national nature reserve, there is tension between the government and the local people. In such cases, the deputies need to do various coordination works to ease this tension before it develops into a conflict. They need to struggle more for the interests of the local people, without violating the basic principle of the government (Deputy 10, 25, 27, 28, 29 and 33).

The deputies categorise “soliciting public opinions” as a challenge in representing the

interests of the state toward the community rather than an achievement in representing the

interests of the community (See “promoting the voice of the community” in Section 7.3.1.

Most of them are non-professional deputies, but they must spend much of their time soliciting the opinions of their constituents and “give feedback to the government” (Deputy 2).

However, the local situation is complex (Deputy 18) and it “changes faster than you can keep up with” (Deputy 18). So the deputies have difficulty in soliciting and having the opinions of

the constituents when they need to promote and explain the state policies to the constituents. We face difficulties in promoting (state) policies and providing leadership for the masses in areas of development (Deputy 18).

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When the people don’t understand the Party’s policy, it is difficult to promote it”

(Deputy 8)

The challenges and achievements that the LCPC deputies discussed in the focus groups are discussed again by the deputies in their interviews on how they play their roles in representing the interests of the state toward the community. As this research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the findings in focus groups and the interviews support and supplement each other. Section 6.4 explains the findings in the interviews by quantifying how many points there are for each achievement and challenge in representing the interests of the state towards the community.