Institutions of Democratic Governance

In early January 2005, the Research Office of the Party's Central Organization Department published this article, which explains how Jiang Zemin's "3 Represents" can "raise the quality" of the lowest Party cadres and speed up economic development. The basic idea is to pair Party cadres with entrepreneurs "skilled at getting rich" so that the cadres can learn economic skills and entrepreneurs can learn how to be cadres. The article praises the "Dual Training and Initiative" projects in basic level Party organs in Gansu province, calling them an innovative attempt to put into practice Jiang Zemin's theory of the "Three Represents."

According to an article in the Beijing News, Ministry of Civil Affairs experts and representatives of local residents committees criticized draft amendments to the Organic Law of Residents Committees at a recent hearing. Residents committees constitute the lowest level of urban government in China and; their members are elected in proceedings often subject to official control and manipulation.

Chinese government agencies often use hearings such as the one described in the article to elicit comments on possible changes in policy or law. Those participating in this particular hearing criticized such official practices as assigning key government responsibilities to residents committees and paying salaries to committee members. The critics pointed out that such practices undermine the independence of the committees, frequently reducing them to administrative tools of the Party and state.

According to a December 15 Beijing News report, an impending public performance review of 82 government agencies in Jiangsu province is prompting officials to buy self-promoting media advertisements. Recent Party and government reforms in many localities have introduced a degree of public supervision into the process of evaluating government performance and selecting officials. In Jiangsu, agencies receiving poor performance reviews from the public risk administrative reorganization, and agency heads may be disciplined. Although the reforms may make government bureaus more responsive to citizen concerns, they also may encourage officials to use government funds to inflate the ratings of their departments. Chinese observers voice suspicion of the last-minute nature of the advertising blitz in Jiangsu, as well as concerns about where the money came from to carry it out.

According to a report in the 21st Business Herald, reforms in one set of townships in Anhui province are reducing the overall number of official cadres, but also prompting an unsettling merger of government and Party posts.

Recent experimental reforms begun in Xuancheng city have directed subordinate townships and districts to eliminate and merge overlapping government and Party offices. These efforts follow leadership pronouncements at the Central Committee plenum meeting in September 2004 that direct local governments to carry out similar reforms with the aim of "increasing Party governance capacity."

According to a story in the Beijing News, Beijing mayor Wang Qishan has ordered that a wide range of local government rules and regulations (guifanxing wenjian) be made available to the public before they may take effect.

Provincial and local government agencies often issue binding regulations without formal notice and comment procedures, creating numerous problems. Citizens often are unaware of the existence of specific rules. Appeal of such regulations to a court is difficult under Chinese administrative law. In addition, conflicts are common between regulations issued independently by different bureaus.

Li Fei, Vice Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, confirmed in a statement on December 1 that citizens may petition for legislative review of laws and regulations that they believe conflict with the PRC Constitution. Li’s comments, the subject of articles in the Beijing News and other domestic papers, were reportedly made in response to a posting on the People’s Daily Web site that raised questions about China’s constitutional review process. Li noted that the NPC Standing Committee has established a special office to handle citizen petitions. He also suggested that a constitutional court is not appropriate for China because China’s government does not apply a concept of separation of powers.

According to an article carried in the Beijing News, the Chinese government is currently considering significant amendments to the PRC Organic Law of People's Courts. Draft amendments under consideration would return the power of death penalty review to the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and introduce explicit protections regarding judicial independence.

According to an article in the Beijing News, the Anhui provincial government has begun to require that the provincial Legal Affairs office review a range of government directives before they are promulgated. Individual ministries or administrative bodies issue these directives, which are called "red-hatted documents" (hongtou wenjian), about general policy implementation issues. These documents raise two sets of problems. First, the Administrative Litigation Law only permits citizens to challenge the legality of “concrete administrative acts,” or administrative decisions that affect them individually. They cannot challenge the legality of government regulations or policies themselves. Thus, citizens cannot challenge the general policy directives, even thought these directives often affect their rights.