Abstract
Village Elections and the Fate of Grassroots Democracy in Xi Jinping’s China
Joshua Hill, Ohio UniversityThe scope, structure, and organization of village elections in China have changed dramatically since the ascension of Xi Jinping in 2012–13. This has attracted little attention in the United States, where policymakers, journalists, and scholars—groups that were fascinated by village elections when they were first implemented in the 1990s—have appeared to lose interest in the subject. This project examines these recent changes, particularly the 2019 decision to merge the (elected) office of village committee chief and the (unelected) position of village party secretary, in order to assess the changing nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule in the countryside and the party’s evolving conception of popular participation in government.
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