Joshua Hill, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley
Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
Elections have been an important part of mainland Chinese political culture for over a century. Beginning in the waning years of the Qing dynasty and continuing until the first decade of the People's Republic, Chinese governments devoted significant amounts of time and resources to the organizing of elections. Despite this, Chinese elections have generally been dismissed as charades because none of the regimes that ruled China in the twentieth century came to power through the ballot box. Instead, rulers expected these elaborately planned elections to serve an entirely different function: as ritual occasions for the training, education, and creation of citizens. The goal of voting was not to give voters the chance to change the government, but to give the government an opportunity to transform the electorate.
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