No global political trend in the last quarter of the 20th century has been more far-reaching and profound than the growth of democracy. During what Samuel P. Huntington has called the “third wave” of democratization, the percentage of states in the world that are democratic has grown from 27 (when the third wave began in 1974) to 61 percent. The trend was particularly powerful during the first half of the 1990s, when the number of democracies increased from 76 to 117, where it has essentially remained during the subsequent four years.

In October 1952, while addressing the Seventh Congress of the Kuomintang (KMT), the party chairman and president of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, reminded his audience that “Sun Yat-sen's highest goal was to build a political system in which sovereignty resided with the people [zuchuan zaimin]” Chiang then said that “in order to oppose communism and recover our nation, the primary task of our party is to carry out local elections, build our nation's political system, and establish the solid foundations for our people to practise democracy.”

During the two decades preceding its 1997 reunification with China, imaginations in Hong Kong ran the gamut from fear to euphoria. Preparations for transfer from British to Chinese rule continued accordingly and Hong Kong's political development has been shaped by the conflicting imperatives responsible for those extremes. Most simply put, the imperatives grew from Hong Kong's fear of Chinese communism and China's fear of an anti-communist Hong Kong. Anxieties were greatest in the colony during 1982 and 1983, when Chinese leaders made known their determination to resume full sovereignty after the 1997 expiration of Britain's leasehold on 90 per cent of Hong Kong's territory. Apprehensions peaked again in 1989, following the military suppression of Beijing's student protest movement in Tiananmen Square. Yet fear also alternated with expressions of great bravado, when the dangers of latterday Chinese communism seemed to pale before the prospect of China's inevitable “Hong Kong-ization.” Between these two extremes, confidence levels waxed and waned as Chinese and British leaders responded, first by negotiating safeguards and then by writing them into law.

Electoral democracy has been defined as “a system of government in which the principal positions of effective government power are filled, directly or indirectly, through meaningful, regular, free and fair… elections.” By this criterion, Hong Kong today falls short of being an electoral democracy. There are periodic elections, and there is a 60-seat Legislative Council (LegCo), at least some of whose members are chosen by universal adult suffrage. There are also a number of organized, highly articulate political parties whose legislative members are frequent, outspoken critics of the government and its policies. And there is a system of transparent electoral laws and procedures administered by a professionally neutral civil service, ensuring that elections remain free and fair. Yet for all its manifest electoral virtues, democracy in post-handover Hong Kong is highly constrained and confined, as noted in the previous article by Suzanne Pepper.

When residents of a few Guangxi villages decided to elect their own leaders in late 1980 and early 1981, none of them could have known they were starting a historic reform. What began as a stopgap effort to fill a political vacuum, after much debate and two decades of uneven implementation, is now enshrined in a national law. Procedures for holding elections have been spelled out and implementing regulations are being formulated at all levels. Voting is now mandatory every three years in every village, bar none.

Direct elections for village leaders have been conducted in China since 1988, but they remain little known or casually dismissed by urban Chinese and the international community. Those who are aware of China's village elections have sharply divergent views as to their genuineness or effectiveness. Some are sceptical that the Chinese Communist Party would ever permit a competitive election that could threaten its grip on power. Others see the elections as a first stage in the building of democracy in China. In many ways, village elections are a kind of Rorschach test, an ambiguous drawing that is interpreted by people according to their predisposition towards China rather than the quality of the elections.

While the election process is important, the significance of the Organic Law on Villagers' Committees rests with what happens after a village election. The existence of the law reveals little about the actual distribution of power and decision-making in China's villages. Even free and fair elections cannot be assumed to bring meaningful change to the contours of rural power where there is a dual authority structure – Party and government – in every village. The villagers' committee is now elected, but the Party secretary is still appointed by the higher levels of the CCP. Which is the locus of power?

Are the values and attitudes of ordinary people in the People's Republic of China (PRC) compatible with behaviour necessary for a liberal democracy to evolve? Or are they likely to obstruct such evolution? Some surveys conducted in recent years within the PRC asked people of different backgrounds and residential areas if they were interested in politics and governance issues, if they conversed with others about their political interests, and if they believed they had some control over their political life. These and other related questions produced survey findings which are discussed and interpreted below to provide some conjectures about the questions posed above.