Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2004
Democracy in rural China has attracted much attention in recentyears. During President Bill Clinton's visit to China in 1998, hemade a public stop at a village outside Xian to chat with a fewChinese villagers about village elections in China. In fact, villagedemocracy has become one of the rare subject matters that theChinese government is eager to publicize and the Western academiaand media are interested to investigate. The Chinese government,often through the Ministry of Civil Affairs, has organized andallowed foreign journalists, social scientists, dignitaries,diplomats, and political, academic, and social organizations (suchas the U.S. International Republican Institute, the Ford Foundation,the Carter Center, and the National Committee on U.S.-ChinaRelations) to go to Chinese rural areas to observe villageselfgovernment and elections. There is no doubt that the Chinesegovernment intends to showcase its village selfgovernment to theoutside world, hoping to improve its tarnished image from theTiananmen crackdown in 1989. Western media and governments areinterested in this new development in China in the hope that thiswill be the beginning of the long-delayed democratic transition inthe most populous country in the world.