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China Local Administration
Governmental institutions below the central level are regulated
by the provisions of the State Constitution of 1982. These
provisions are intended to streamline the local state institutions
and make them more efficient and more responsive to grass-roots
needs; to stimulate local initiative and creativity; to restore
prestige to the local authorities that had been seriously
diminished during the Cultural Revolution; and to aid local
officials in their efforts to organize and mobilize the masses. As
with other major reforms undertaken after 1978, the principal
motivation for the provisions was to provide better support for the
ongoing modernization program.
The state institutions below the national level were local
people's congresses--the NPC's local counterparts--whose functions
and powers were exercised by their standing committees at and above
the county level when the congresses were not in session. The
standing committee was composed of a chairman, vice chairmen, and
members. The people's congresses also had permanent committees that
became involved in governmental policy affecting their areas and
their standing committees, and the people's congresses held
meetings every other month to supervise provincial-level government
activities. In May 1984 Peng Zhen described the relationship
between the NPC Standing Committee and the standing committees at
lower levels as "one of liaison, not of leadership." Further, he
stressed that the institution of standing committees was aimed at
transferring power to lower levels so as to tap the initiative of
the localities for the modernization drive.
The administrative arm of these people's congresses was the
local people's government. Its local organs were established at
three levels: the provinces, autonomous regions, and special
municipalities; autonomous prefectures, counties, autonomous
counties (called banners in Nei Monggol Autonomous Region
(Inner Mongolia)), cities, and municipal districts; and, at the
base of the administrative hierarchy, administrative towns
(xiang). The administrative towns replaced people's communes
as the basic level of administration.
Reform programs have brought the devolution of considerable
decision-making authority to the provincial and lower levels.
Nevertheless, because of the continued predominance of the
fundamental principle of democratic centralism, which is at the
base of China's State Constitution, these lower levels are always
vulnerable to changes in direction and decisions originated at the
central level of government. In this respect, all local organs are
essentially extensions of central government authorities and thus
are responsible to the "unified leadership" of the central organs.
The people's congresses at the provincial, city, and county
levels each elected the heads of their respective government
organizations. These included governors and deputy governors,
mayors and deputy mayors, and heads and deputy heads of counties,
districts, and towns. The people's congresses also had the right to
recall these officials and to demand explanations for official
actions. Specifically, any motion raised by a delegate and
supported by three others obligated the corresponding government
authorities to respond. Congresses at each level examined and
approved budgets and the plans for the economic and social
development of their respective administrative areas. They also
maintained public order, protected public property, and safeguarded
the rights of citizens of all nationalities. (About 7 percent of
the total population was composed of minority nationalities
concentrated mainly in sensitive border areas.) All deputies were
to maintain close and responsive contacts with their various
constituents.
Before 1980 people's congresses at and above the county level
did not have standing committees. These had been considered
superfluous because the local congresses did not have a heavy
workload and in any case could serve adequately as executive bodies
for the local organs of power. The CCP's decision in 1978 to adopt
the Four Modernizations as its official party line, however,
produced a critical need for broad mass support and the means to
mobilize that support for the varied activities of both party and
state organs. In short, the new programs revealed the importance of
responsive government. The CCP view was that the standing
committees were better equipped than the local people's governments
to address such functions as convening the people's congresses;
keeping in touch with the grass roots and their deputies;
supervising, inspecting, appointing, and removing local
administrative and judicial personnel; and preparing for the
election of local deputies to the next higher people's congresses.
The use of standing committees was seen as a more effective and
rational way to supervise the activities of the local people's
governments than requiring that local administrative authorities
check and balance themselves. The proclaimed purpose of the
standing committee system was to make local governments more
responsible and more responsive to constituents.
The establishment of the standing committees in effect also
meant restoring the formal division of responsibilities between
party and state authorities that had existed before 1966. The 1979
reform mandated that the party should not interfere with the
administrative activities of local government organs and that its
function should be confined to "political leadership" to ensure
that the party's line was correctly followed and implemented.
Provincial-level party secretaries, for instance, were no longer
allowed to serve concurrently as provincial-level governors or
deputy governors (chairmen or vice chairmen in autonomous regions,
and mayors or deputy mayors in special municipalities), as they had
been allowed to do during the Cultural Revolution. In this
connection most officials who had held positions in the former
provincial-level revolutionary committees were excluded from the
new local people's governments. Some provincial-level officials who
were purged during the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated and
returned to power.
The local people's congresses and their standing committees
were given the authority to pass local legislation and regulations
under the Organic Law of the People's Courts of 1980. This
authority was granted only at the level of provinces, autonomous
regions, and special municipalities. Its purpose was to allow local
congresses to accommodate the special circumstances and actual
needs of their jurisdictions. This measure was billed as a "major
reform" instituted because "a unified constitution and a set of
uniform laws for the whole country have proved increasingly
inadequate" in coping with differing "local features or cultural
and economic conditions." On July 17, 1979, Renmin Ribao
(People's Daily) observed: "To better enforce the constitution and
state laws, we must bring them more in line with the concrete
realities in various areas and empower these areas to approve local
laws and regulations so that they can decide certain major issues
with local conditions in mind." The law explicitly stated, however,
that the scope of legislation must be within the limits of the
State Constitution and policies of the state, and that locally
enacted bills must be submitted "for the record" to the Standing
Committee of the NPC and to the State Council, which, according to
the 1982 State Constitution, can annul them if they are found to
"contravene the Constitution, the statutes, or the administrative
rules and regulations."
In 1987 the party and the government continued to stress the
importance of bringing about popular "supervision" over, for
instance, the pivotal county-level administration. The importance
of maintaining close ties with the masses, listening to their
opinions, being concerned with their welfare, and serving their
interests was emphasized. Such concern was ensured with the
adoption of electoral procedures as part of the 1979 reform package
that called for instituting direct elections of deputies to the
local people's congresses at the county level. Under the old
procedure, the electorate's only choice had been to vote for a
slate of candidates equal in number to the number of deputies to be
elected. Additional reforms provided for a more open process of
nomination, a secret ballot with a choice of candidates, and the
possibility of primary elections. The new election procedures were
also extended to the election of government officials and of
delegates to high-level people's congresses. (All of these reforms
taken together offered the potential, in those areas where they
were adopted, for significant change.) Experiments reportedly also
were taking place in certain medium-sized cities, beginning in
1986, to increase participation by citizens in political activities
and decision making. In December 1986 Beijing municipal authorities
announced that the mid-1987 municipal elections would allow more
than one candidate to run for election for each seat available.
This announcement came as extensive student demonstrations in key
urban centers were demanding broader democratic freedoms.
Official efforts to improve government performance at the
grass-roots level continued in 1987. They had as a precedent a set
of regulations, first enacted in 1952 and 1954, covering the
activities of what are officially referred to as "basic-level mass
autonomous organizations." Such organizations included the urban
neighborhood committees, subdistrict offices, people's mediation
committees, and public security committees. These regulations had
been reissued in January 1980 by the NPC Standing Committee in an
attempt to strengthen the grass-roots organizations. In addition,
the 1982 State Constitution had proclaimed the establishment of
residents' and villagers' committees to ensure public security and
preserve social order; to provide public health services and
mediate civil disputes; and, most important, to carry information
to and from government organs. Another significant reform at the
basic level was the establishment of the administrative town
(xiang) government to replace the commune. This reform freed the
commune to function solely as an economic unit.
Another administrative reform directly related to economic
modernization was the establishment in 1979 of the special economic
zones, which included Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou, all in
Guangdong Province, and Xiamen in Fujian Province. Supervising
China's special economic zones were the Guangdong provincial
committee, headquartered in Shenzhen, and the Xiamen Construction
and Development Corporation. The Guangdong provincial committee
controlled Zhuhai, Shenzhen, and Shantou and shared its authority
over Shekou (a small port zone within Shenzhen) with the China
Merchant Steam Navigation Company. The latter was a Hong Kong
subsidiary of China's Ministry of Communications that had been
empowered in 1979 to negotiate all foreign ventures in Shekou.
The special administrative region, another administrative unit,
was developed to serve foreign policy goals. Article 31 of the
State Constitution of 1982 empowers the NPC to enact laws to
establish special administrative regions to accommodate local
conditions. Hong Kong will come under this rule when Britain
transfers its sovereignty over its former colony to China on July
1, 1997, as delineated in the Joint Declaration on the Question of
Hong Kong, signed on September 26, 1984. Macao is slated to become
a special administrative region on December 20, 1999, when Portugal
is to transfer governmental authority over Macao to China, as
stipulated in the Joint Declaration on the Question of Macao,
initialed on March 26, 1987
(see Nationalism
, ch. 12). In 1986 and
1987 the State Council's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office was
drafting the Basic Law for the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region, which would define Hong Kong's system of government. The
new law was due for completion in 1988.
Data as of July 1987
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