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Winning 862 votes from the 877 delegates to the Communist Party of China (CPC) provincial congress in east China’s Jiangsu Province on May 14, Cheng Junrong, a 34-year-old migrant worker at a factory production line, was elected as one of 2,270 delegates to the 18th CPC National Congress to be held in November.
Cheng is the province’s first migrant worker delegate elected to a CPC national congress.
Cheng, who grew up in a village near Jiangsu’s provincial capital of Nanjing, has been working at a Nanjing-based machinery maker after finishing junior middle school in 1994.
“I was a little surprised when I was elected. As one of our country’s hundreds of millions of migrant workers, I consider it a great honor,” he told Xinhua News Agency in June.
Cheng’s election came after undergoing multiple procedures, including the nomination of candidates, qualification checks, public notification of the candidates, short listing and final voting.
The process began with 22,718 grassroots Party organizations under the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee nominating 7,375 people as candidates.
After selections by CPC committees at various levels, the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee worked out a nomination list of seven people, including Cheng, for the provincial Party committee.
The CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee then put 81 candidates, including two nominated by the CPC Central Committee, up for a final vote at the provincial Party congress.
Finally, 70 delegates to the CPC national congress were elected with the candidates outnumbering the elected delegates by 15.7 percent, higher than the minimum of 15 percent required by the CPC Central Committee.
As one of his factory’s top technical experts, Cheng has been honored several times as a national and provincial model worker.
Cheng’s colleagues were not at all surprised by his election. “He was the first to come to our mind when we were nominating candidates from Party members in our factory,” said Cheng’s coworker Zhang Mingguan. “He has never looked down on himself for being a migrant worker. He has worked his way up today by constantly improving himself.”
“Cheng is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, so he is experienced in giving suggestions regarding social and political issues,” said the factory’s CPC committee secretary Xu Ketang. The National People’s Congress is China’s top legislature.
The CPC has pledged to increase the representation of grassroots organizations and groups, such as migrant workers, at the national congress.
The minimum proportion of grassroots delegates will be 32 percent, 2 percentage points higher than that of the previous congress in 2007, said the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee in November 2011. It also required that worker delegates should account for no less than 10 percent of the total and be made up of workers from public and private enterprises in industrial and service sectors.
In Jiangsu Province, delegates from grassroots Party organizations account for 38.6 percent of the total, including Cheng and eight other workers.
“The election results show that the CPC Central Committee has attached more importance to giving a greater voice to grassroots Party members,” Cheng said. “I’ll do my job well as a delegate to the CPC national congress and make suggestions on behalf of migrant workers.”
Direct elections
Competitive election is one of the many institutional reforms the 91-year-old CPC has launched to better enhance itself.
On June 30, 2010, spokespersons from 11 departments of the CPC Central Committee made a group debut at a press conference in Beijing.
“The CPC Central Committee has paid special attention to disclosing information about Party affairs,” said Wang Chen, Minister of the International Communication Office of the CPC Central Committee, at the press conference.
Wang said that publicizing Party affairs information is a major focus of the CPC’s work.
Another major effort the Party has made to boost intra-Party democracy is the enlarged trials on the open nomination and direct election of Party officials over the past five years. Before the trials, most Party officials were appointed by higher-ups.
On May 15, 2009, Qiu Zhankai from the Bureau of Civil Affairs of Shenzhen in southern Guangdong Province became the first directly elected Party chief of a local government organization in China.
Qiu was selected after seven months of public recommendation, and the whittling down of 75 candidates to 26 finalists, who gave speeches and answered questions from the audience.
Compared with appointed officials, those winning a direct election are more selfconfident, responsible and better motivated, according to Outlook Weekly, a publication of Xinhua News Agency. Reporters with the magazine made field interviews earlier this year in Jiangsu and Yunnan provinces, where Party officials at township level have been directly elected on a trial basis.
“My biggest worry for the last two years was that I could not meet my campaign promises and would be called a liar by fellow Party comrades and the masses. Now that they are all met, I am finally at ease,” Yao Dan, who was elected directly as the Party secretary of Zhujie Township in Qujing City, southwestern Yunnan Province, told Outlook Weekly in August. During her election campaign, Yao pledged to bring safe drinking water to all the 9,000 residents of the township’s mountainous areas. This problem was solved after an investment of 81.7 million yuan ($13 million) on water projects over the past two years.
The CPC chose Nanjing to pilot the first direct election of Party officials in an urban community in 2004. From April to June 2010, direct elections for village Party chiefs were run in 806 villages with a total population of 2.7 million in the city, where CPC committees in 363 neighborhoods in urban areas had piloted leadership elections since 2009.
Nanjing became the first Chinese city to extend the direct elections of grassroots Party officials to both urban and rural areas on a large scale.
Supervision of powers
In China’s political hierarchy, county chief has long been viewed as a position of great importance. Ancient Chinese wisdom has it that “only when a county is in order, can a nation be at peace.” This has proved true as county Party chiefs appear very vulnerable to corruption. In one notorious case, Li Yinkui, former Party chief of Fengqiu County in central Henan Province, was found in 2009 to have accepted 1,575 bribes worth more than 12 million yuan ($1.8 million) over a course of seven years.
A public outcry following the case led to accelerated reforms by the CPC to supervise and check the power of Party chiefs at county level.
In March 2009, three counties, Cheng’an in northern Hebei Province, Suining in Jiangsu Province and Wuhou in southwestern Sichuan Province, were chosen from China’s 2,862 counties to spearhead a reform to strengthen the supervision of county-level Party authorities.
In the guidelines issued by the CPC’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission and the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the reform was described as a significant measure to curb corruption.
As part of the reform, photos, resumes, mobile and office telephone numbers and job descriptions of all senior Party officials in Cheng’an County were made public. “By making Party officials’ responsibilities public, residents will know who to turn to if there is a problem or complaint,” Zhang Chenliang, chief of the Cheng’an County Committee of the CPC, told Xinhua.
Another reform on checking the power of county Party chiefs has been conducted in central Hubei Province. In September 2010, the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee issued a regulation that limits the power the chiefs of county Party committees in promoting officials, forbids their involvement in land auction and project bids, and authorizes the county-level discipline watchdogs to directly report possible corruption of county Party chiefs to Party committees at upper levels.
Over the past few years, a string of policies to curb the misuse of power and police the behaviors of Party officials have been issued.
In February 2010, the CPC Central Committee issued a code of ethics to ensure clean governance. The guidelines specify 52 unacceptable practices, including accepting cash or financial instruments as gifts and abusing power for personal gains.
“The release and implementation of these Party regulations have effectively promoted the Party’s institutional build-up by erecting a sound monitoring system,” said Hong Xianghua, an associate professor with the Party School of CPC Central Committee.
Cheng is the province’s first migrant worker delegate elected to a CPC national congress.
Cheng, who grew up in a village near Jiangsu’s provincial capital of Nanjing, has been working at a Nanjing-based machinery maker after finishing junior middle school in 1994.
“I was a little surprised when I was elected. As one of our country’s hundreds of millions of migrant workers, I consider it a great honor,” he told Xinhua News Agency in June.
Cheng’s election came after undergoing multiple procedures, including the nomination of candidates, qualification checks, public notification of the candidates, short listing and final voting.
The process began with 22,718 grassroots Party organizations under the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee nominating 7,375 people as candidates.
After selections by CPC committees at various levels, the CPC Nanjing Municipal Committee worked out a nomination list of seven people, including Cheng, for the provincial Party committee.
The CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee then put 81 candidates, including two nominated by the CPC Central Committee, up for a final vote at the provincial Party congress.
Finally, 70 delegates to the CPC national congress were elected with the candidates outnumbering the elected delegates by 15.7 percent, higher than the minimum of 15 percent required by the CPC Central Committee.
As one of his factory’s top technical experts, Cheng has been honored several times as a national and provincial model worker.
Cheng’s colleagues were not at all surprised by his election. “He was the first to come to our mind when we were nominating candidates from Party members in our factory,” said Cheng’s coworker Zhang Mingguan. “He has never looked down on himself for being a migrant worker. He has worked his way up today by constantly improving himself.”
“Cheng is also a deputy to the National People’s Congress, so he is experienced in giving suggestions regarding social and political issues,” said the factory’s CPC committee secretary Xu Ketang. The National People’s Congress is China’s top legislature.
The CPC has pledged to increase the representation of grassroots organizations and groups, such as migrant workers, at the national congress.
The minimum proportion of grassroots delegates will be 32 percent, 2 percentage points higher than that of the previous congress in 2007, said the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee in November 2011. It also required that worker delegates should account for no less than 10 percent of the total and be made up of workers from public and private enterprises in industrial and service sectors.
In Jiangsu Province, delegates from grassroots Party organizations account for 38.6 percent of the total, including Cheng and eight other workers.
“The election results show that the CPC Central Committee has attached more importance to giving a greater voice to grassroots Party members,” Cheng said. “I’ll do my job well as a delegate to the CPC national congress and make suggestions on behalf of migrant workers.”
Direct elections
Competitive election is one of the many institutional reforms the 91-year-old CPC has launched to better enhance itself.
On June 30, 2010, spokespersons from 11 departments of the CPC Central Committee made a group debut at a press conference in Beijing.
“The CPC Central Committee has paid special attention to disclosing information about Party affairs,” said Wang Chen, Minister of the International Communication Office of the CPC Central Committee, at the press conference.
Wang said that publicizing Party affairs information is a major focus of the CPC’s work.
Another major effort the Party has made to boost intra-Party democracy is the enlarged trials on the open nomination and direct election of Party officials over the past five years. Before the trials, most Party officials were appointed by higher-ups.
On May 15, 2009, Qiu Zhankai from the Bureau of Civil Affairs of Shenzhen in southern Guangdong Province became the first directly elected Party chief of a local government organization in China.
Qiu was selected after seven months of public recommendation, and the whittling down of 75 candidates to 26 finalists, who gave speeches and answered questions from the audience.
Compared with appointed officials, those winning a direct election are more selfconfident, responsible and better motivated, according to Outlook Weekly, a publication of Xinhua News Agency. Reporters with the magazine made field interviews earlier this year in Jiangsu and Yunnan provinces, where Party officials at township level have been directly elected on a trial basis.
“My biggest worry for the last two years was that I could not meet my campaign promises and would be called a liar by fellow Party comrades and the masses. Now that they are all met, I am finally at ease,” Yao Dan, who was elected directly as the Party secretary of Zhujie Township in Qujing City, southwestern Yunnan Province, told Outlook Weekly in August. During her election campaign, Yao pledged to bring safe drinking water to all the 9,000 residents of the township’s mountainous areas. This problem was solved after an investment of 81.7 million yuan ($13 million) on water projects over the past two years.
The CPC chose Nanjing to pilot the first direct election of Party officials in an urban community in 2004. From April to June 2010, direct elections for village Party chiefs were run in 806 villages with a total population of 2.7 million in the city, where CPC committees in 363 neighborhoods in urban areas had piloted leadership elections since 2009.
Nanjing became the first Chinese city to extend the direct elections of grassroots Party officials to both urban and rural areas on a large scale.
Supervision of powers
In China’s political hierarchy, county chief has long been viewed as a position of great importance. Ancient Chinese wisdom has it that “only when a county is in order, can a nation be at peace.” This has proved true as county Party chiefs appear very vulnerable to corruption. In one notorious case, Li Yinkui, former Party chief of Fengqiu County in central Henan Province, was found in 2009 to have accepted 1,575 bribes worth more than 12 million yuan ($1.8 million) over a course of seven years.
A public outcry following the case led to accelerated reforms by the CPC to supervise and check the power of Party chiefs at county level.
In March 2009, three counties, Cheng’an in northern Hebei Province, Suining in Jiangsu Province and Wuhou in southwestern Sichuan Province, were chosen from China’s 2,862 counties to spearhead a reform to strengthen the supervision of county-level Party authorities.
In the guidelines issued by the CPC’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission and the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the reform was described as a significant measure to curb corruption.
As part of the reform, photos, resumes, mobile and office telephone numbers and job descriptions of all senior Party officials in Cheng’an County were made public. “By making Party officials’ responsibilities public, residents will know who to turn to if there is a problem or complaint,” Zhang Chenliang, chief of the Cheng’an County Committee of the CPC, told Xinhua.
Another reform on checking the power of county Party chiefs has been conducted in central Hubei Province. In September 2010, the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee issued a regulation that limits the power the chiefs of county Party committees in promoting officials, forbids their involvement in land auction and project bids, and authorizes the county-level discipline watchdogs to directly report possible corruption of county Party chiefs to Party committees at upper levels.
Over the past few years, a string of policies to curb the misuse of power and police the behaviors of Party officials have been issued.
In February 2010, the CPC Central Committee issued a code of ethics to ensure clean governance. The guidelines specify 52 unacceptable practices, including accepting cash or financial instruments as gifts and abusing power for personal gains.
“The release and implementation of these Party regulations have effectively promoted the Party’s institutional build-up by erecting a sound monitoring system,” said Hong Xianghua, an associate professor with the Party School of CPC Central Committee.