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.
from the March 5, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"Each year, hot topics emerge, and the debate attracts government attention," says Professor Cai. "This is a formal channel to reach the rulers, and in this sense the NPC is assuming its responsibility to represent people's opinions."
"For outsiders looking at the surface, the annual NPC meetings seem like a formality, with no substance," he adds. "But they have their political uses."
Delegates also push their agendas through the media, alerting journalists to the closed-door debates. At the local level, too, newspapers play an important role in buttressing deputies' formal powers, says Mr. Xu. "In all the cases where we have won, it has been because of public pressure and newspaper reports," he explains.
Xu has used his position as a district level People's Congress member to prevent the closure of a school for migrant workers' children, and fight for better compensation for residents of housing due for demolition and redevelopment as office space, he says.
"I can do something, even if it is very little," Xu reckons.
Pushing some agendas, not others
At the Beijing People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory sister body to the city's People's Congress, Liu Yaowei also limits himself to what he calls practical issues "related to government management, not the political system."
For example, he and his political allies lost a bid last year to have the capital mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cultural Revolution, which was judged too sensitive a topic. But he won a two-year battle with the city fathers to end a ban on firecrackers at Chinese New Year that had irked Beijing residents since the early 1990s.
Professor Liu is a member of one of the eight "democratic" parties allied with the Communist Party that send delegates to the People's Congresses and their consultative counterparts.
The fact that the Communists choose who those delegates will be, he says, "is not very satisfactory, but it's better than nothing."
Xu takes a similarly pragmatic approach to the lack of democracy in his local congress. "You cannot change much in Haidian without change in China as a whole," he regrets. "But the most important thing is the process. I still think it is meaningful, even for the little progress we can make."
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