From Cooptation to Exclusion: Chinese Communist Party’s Changing Strategies in Governing Independent Candidates in Direct Elections for Local People’s Congresses

The 1979 Chinese Election Law with its follow-up amendments has opened up a great legal and political ground for semi-competitive elections, in which a lot of independent candidates have shown up and run for a campaign although facing tremendous obstacles and constraints. The past three decades has witnessed two basic trends of the development of PC elections. On the one hand, the Party has been tightening its control over the elections. On the other hand, the number of independent participants in PC elections is growing. Why does the one Party authoritarian regime change their policy against independent candidates from cooptation to exclusion, even though some of these candidates might actually be of significant help to the regime? Although the prospect of being elected becomes highly vague, why is there still a growing number of independent candidates trying to join in the elections? To understand the puzzle, this paper will, based on fieldwork evidences, take a closer look at independent candidates and the Party’s governing strategies on them: Who are they? Why do they run for the quasi-democratic elections? What are their opportunities and constraints? Why does the party-regime turn to exclude them, and how? What is the future of local people’s congress election in China? In answering these questions, this paper will also try to rethink the widespread wisdom of comparative authoritarian theories which suggest that authoritarian regimes strategically consolidate their rule by using elections to enhance legitimacy, divide oppositions or bring part of the oppositions to work within the system.