The New Chinese Hybrid: "The Deliberative Poll" + Porto Alegre Budgeting

By Ted Becker

In a recent development, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is endorsing deliberative democracy experiments at the local level. The CCP in Beijing often receives complaints from the hinterlands that there is too much corruption and incompetence among the local CP leadership. Many citizens say the CP never listens to their complaints. This has led ever more frequently to large and sometimes violent protests.

As JPD has reported, the Chinese Communist Party held a conference in Beijing in November of 2004 to explore new deliberative democracy methods around the world. Apparently, what they heard made sense. The CCP has since given the go-ahead to try out a new Chinese deliberative democracy "hybrid" in Zeguo, a city of approximately 110,000 people in the coastal province of Zhejiang..

According to the New York Times (June 19, 2005, p. 6), what may have precipitated this experiment was a violent confrontation between over 30,000 citizens and 1,000 policemen in Dongyang (a neighbor of Zeguo) over the transfer of land tilled by farmer-tenants to 13 chemical factories owned by the state and some private enterprises in Dongyang, a nearby city. There were many injuries and the factories were unable to keep running. This followed rapidly upon another major battle between citizens and police over a new power generating facility in Dingzhou, a city situated in Hebei Province.

ENTER JIANG ZHAOHUA AND JAMES FISHKIN

Jiang Zhaohua is the CP Secretary in Zeguo. Learning of the positive effects of deliberative democracy, he was able to bring Dr. James Fishkin of Stanford University and the inventor of the "The Deliberative Poll," to his city. Together, they set up a new kind of citizen empowerment device that is part Porto Alegre and part random sampling (see JPD report).

Jiang and Fishkin culled some 257 citizens by random sampling to serve as an assembly, al a Athenian democracy, that would set priorities for public spending. According to Howard French in the NY Times, these citizens listened to "lengthy briefings on the pros and cons of a long list of potential municipal projects....(and) showed a decided preference for environmental works, including sewage treatment plants and public parks."

Jiang pointed out how different this was from local politics as usual in China today: "Our original manner was the government deciding everything, only announcing the results afterward to the people...We never got to know the public's opinion. It was 20 people sitting in a room who decided everything." To what extent these priorities become policy remains to be seen.

ABERRATION OR MOVEMENT?

The NY Times correspondent observed that "If unique in form, Zeguo's experiment takes place against a backdrop of a broad effervescence of democratic ideas bubbling up into local politics all over China."

This view is echoed by Li Fan, director of the World and China Institute in Beijing. "The experiments taking place here and there are very meaningful, because China's economic reforms began the same way."

Since the CCP knows that there is great unrest among hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese throughout the country, China could become the world's greatest testing grounds for the most advanced theories and projects in deliberative democracy. Can deliberative democracy change local, regional or even national priorities and policies and quell the deepening citizen unrest? If so, China's experiments in deliberative democracy may rival its experiments in state managed capitalism.

The evidence is only beginning to be presented. There will be more to come. JPD will keep a close eye on China and continue its reports and present any and all valid and reliable research in either or both parts of the Journal.

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