China s local election candidates campaign online
Post on: 2011-11-02 By: admin
When Yao Bo announced online that he was running in China's local elections, he joined dozens of candidates using the Internet to campaign for votes -- a phenomenon that has spooked authorities.
With more than half a billion Chinese now online, independent candidates are for the first time able to get their message to a broad audience of voters -- the reason Yao says he decided to run for elections.
But the 39-year-old writer, who is standing for election to the local people's congress in the Beijing district of Changping on November 8, admits that he is scared.
Others like him have been detained and threatened, and rights groups say the government fears a surge in independent candidates for one of China's only forms of direct election.
"It's not possible for me to say I'm not afraid, I am," said Yao. "But so far I haven't had any (trouble), maybe because I'm low key."
Local people's congresses are mandated to supervise the government, but until recently, few in China paid much attention to the five-yearly elections, which observers say are largely symbolic.
Most candidates are chosen by the government or Communist Party officials and while independents can take part if they have the backing of 10 people or more, few have won or even been allowed to stand.
This year, however, they have jumped into the spotlight after candidates used the web, and in particular the weibos -- microblogging services similar to Twitter -- to publicise their campaigns.
Some 140 independent candidates have decided to stand, according to the World and China Institute -- a non-government, non-profit research organisation composed of scholars and policy analysts.
Increasing numbers of people are seen as keen to play an active role in China's developing citizens' movement.
David Bandurski, a Hong Kong-based researcher at the China Media Project, said contenders have been able to campaign to "broader national audiences of more engaged and politically literate journalists, intellectuals and citizens".
Yao, who has more than 300,000 followers on weibo, says he decided to stand for election because of the multiple means of getting his message across.
"This year is different to other years in that mass information is more developed and methods of communication are much quicker, (so) your voice can't be crushed," he said.
"Anyone can communicate on-the-spot at any time, so the risks tied to standing for election are hugely diminished."
So far this year though, only two independents are known to have won local elections, which take place at different times in different areas.
Guo Huojia -- from the southern city of Foshan -- is one such winner. He was unwilling to speak when contacted by AFP but his lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, confirmed his win.
"The government is of course not happy about independent candidates, because many of them are petitioners and rights protectors," Liu said.
Petitioning is China's official system for hearing its citizens' grievances over injustices or unresolved disputes such as illegal land grabs or police misconduct.
Liu said it was harder for authorities to arrest trouble-makers once they became local representatives, and independents often raised sensitive issues if they attended the annual national parliamentary meeting.
This year has seen a broad range of people standing as independent candidates.
Li Chengpeng, a celebrity blogger and author from the southwestern city of Chengdu, announced his candidacy on his weibo account, which has garnered more than 3.7 million followers.
He told AFP he still had no idea when the election would be held, but refused to comment further, hinting at pressure from authorities.
Liu Ping, meanwhile, is on the other end of the scale. A retired worker from Xinyu in the eastern province of Jiangxi, she saw her local election come and go in June without being allowed to register.
Since then, she says, her phone is monitored and the service sometimes cut off and she has been detained, threatened and accused of mixing with "overseas anti-China people".
Asked about the harassment of independent candidates, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said citizens' rights were "protected by China's constitution and laws".
Wang Songlian, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group, said the party fears this form of "people's power" will grow out of control and threaten its monopoly on power.
But "because these elections are at such a low level of government and because of the way China's political system is structured, the participation of independent candidates is unlikely to bring democracy," she told AFP.
Still, Yao Bo -- who says he wants to push for better transport, more schools, kindergartens and hospitals if he is elected in Changping -- is hopeful.
"I think authorities will gradually accept this reality, that this right that citizens have cannot be brushed aside," he said.
"Change in China has often been initiated by ordinary people."
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• New York, United States•
and rights groups say the government fears a surge in independent candidates for one of China's only forms of direct election..
Obviously, these rights groups have either read the Chinese government's secret diary or have evolved to the point where they have mastered telepathic powers far beyond that of normal humans (you know...poor slobs like us that cannot read minds). Oh...they haven't? Then why does the AP constantly feel obliged to publish their random speculations as if they were fact?
Interesting that even elections that include grass-roots-level candidates should somehow be twisted into a story of impending menace and paranoia. The fact is, this story takes a free election and twists it into something it isn't, and while it quotes these unnamed sources and rights groups, there is no mention at all of who these rights groups are, and where they are based. Perhaps revealing that information would allow the reader to see past the spin and recognize the not-so-hidden agenda of simply decrying anything and everything that is done in China. The bottom line is this : They are having elections with independent candidates that (according to the story) are not tools and mouthpieces for the established special interests. When will WE be able to have that HERE?
This article try to portrait this as some kind of uprising. But in reality, it's the central government that's gradually allowing these elections to take place at the local level, to gain more feedback from the people. Not only People's Congress representatives, many village and town level executives in the South are selected by election in the past few years.
That's not to say there aren't any problems. There are cases of vote-buying, but that's the whole purpose of these test elections, to find out problems before it is implemented in a bigger scale.
Hu has acknowledged political problems almost a decade ago. Despite how the media want to portrait China, China will move forward.
Oh, by the way, how much have these rights group contributed directly to improve the situation in China for : rights to have food on the table, rights to have housing, rights to have ...Human rights is not all conclusively represented by voting and the lack of nation wide voting should not be a reason to claim China is all bad, just like the US was not all bad in the sixcties when balck could not vote or so not long ago when women could not vote.Let's hope China could continue to move in this correct direction for years to come.As the Secretary of Statesaid: a strong China is good for world peace.
Intelligent Designer Infi ...
Geez China just seem to can't do anything right according to these self hypocrite rights groups.Hey losers, get a life and a real history book and learn something for a change!
• Dallas, United States•
China is making progress.....but AP is making up another Evil China story...
AP teach me what a joke the free west media really are.
Regardless of the AP/Yahoo spin on the story, China is moving forward.One day, China will have elections with real representative of people at all level unlike the US where the two big parties represent the 1%.We all need to keep moving forward.Hope the US election system will improve to represent the 99%, a little bit at a time.
Cynicism Is My Umbrella
This is the 3rd day in a row that yahoo ran a story where these alleged analysts just take a wild GUESS at what goes on in some meeting and they write it up as news. Can I play too? Analysts say that all closed door sessions of congress and any such activity in DC are in fact just wild parties for worshipping satan, cross-dressing and sacrificing small animals while listening to really bad 1980's new-wave pop music. Hey yahoo - take that statement off the comments and publish it as news!
I posted that last week for one of a whole series of articles that were making all these ridiculous claims from unnamed spin-doctors, but I might as well just clip it on to this piece. Replace the word analyst with rights group and all these stories are just the same old song and dance. Yahoo, you're getting boring. Same 5hlt. Different Day.
• Dallas, United States•
ahahaha!! this is retarded.... either way, the commie government is going to send in troopscrush these people. Oh yeah... by the way~ don't expect internet to come on for a long time
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Article original from: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-local-election-candidates-campaign-online-143211673.html
