China elections: the possibility of independent candidates 中国选举制度

China's constitution allows independent candidates to run in local elections but it is a futile exercise for those who dare to get their names on the ballot. While the world continues to digest the result of the US election, China is holding its own nationwide ballot - one of the biggest anywhere.

By early next year, up to 900 million people will have voted in China's district elections.

But while the Communist Party has been highly critical of what it sees as the "farce" of American democracy, it's not so keen on scrutiny of its own system. Now it is China's turn, but by early next year, according to state-run media, 900 million people the length and breadth of China will have cast their ballots.

As a result, more than 2.5 million deputies will take their seats in thousands of local "people's congresses". Those local deputies will in turn "elect" the city and provincial level congresses above them, and so on all the way to very top.

So these local polls are the only chance most Chinese people get to vote but there is a crucial, unofficial caveat. It is the Communist Party that decides who gets on to the ballot. For the vast majority of would-be independent candidates the task of obtaining the requisite ten nominations is made so difficult that their quest for office is over before it even begins.

China's journalists have had full, unfettered access to America's open system of democracy and have used that access to full effect. They have covered the US election as a case study in all that is wrong with Western democracy - the dissatisfaction with elites, the bitter, divisive nature of the campaign and the concerns over media bias and corporate influence.

And Chinese readers of this Communist Party-led reporting have been constantly reminded that they should think of themselves as lucky. The US campaign has been described as "circus-like," a "chaotic political farce" and a "train wreck".

Of course, some of those sentiments could very well be written from the pens of Western journalists. That, though, is the point.

Democracy is recognised, even by its strongest proponents as flawed and vulnerable to manipulation but that does not necessarily make it worse than the alternatives. Public dissent, social discord and a simmering resentment of the ruling classes are not unique to America or Britain.

And the thuggery and heavy-handed control are signs that behind the supposed political unity of China's one-party state lies a deep unease. It springs from the knowledge that even one independent candidate presents a threat to the very premise on which the whole system is based.

There is no reciprocal, open invitation to the foreign media to freely observe, report and comment.

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