Behind placid Great Hall, real debate at China's annual congress

An arena for limited political action thrives behind closed doors, and at lower levels of government.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 5, 2007 edition

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BEIJING - For sheer placidity, few political set pieces in today's world rival a plenary session of the annual meeting of China's supreme legislative body, the National People's Congress, which opens here Monday.

But behind the carefully orchestrated votes and the paeans for the ruling Communist Party that will echo around the Great Hall of the People for the next two weeks, real debate will be fermenting in closed-door meetings, say legislators and analysts.

As the government moves hesitantly toward the rule of law in more areas of its citizens' lives, "many things need legal legitimacy," says Wang Zhengxu, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore. That means that the NPC "has been getting some political muscle in recent years."

In theory, the NPC's 2,980 members constitute the highest body in the land, naming the president, approving the national budget, and passing legislation such as the key law scheduled for passage next week to protect private property, seen as another nail in Chinese communism's coffin.

In reality, they merely formalize decisions that the Communist Party politburo has already made and endorse what the party wants to do. Sixty percent of them are ruling party members.

But the consensus-conscious nature of contemporary Chinese politics gives the NPC scope to make its voice heard. And at lower levels of government, local People's Congresses can sometimes offer an arena for real, if limited, political action, say democracy activists.

The limits derive largely from the way People's Congress members are chosen: At the lowest, district level they are directly elected by the citizenry, but Communist apparatchiks generally ensure that potential troublemakers do not get on the ballot.

Further up the scale, at city, provincial, and national levels, each congress is elected by the congress below it. "By law we have wide powers, but most deputies simply follow government orders," says Xu Zhiyong, a People's Congress member in the Haidian district of Beijing and outspoken democracy proponent.

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