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The launch of village elections in China has passed its 20th anniversary. Elections officially began with the enactment of the Organic Law of Village Committees. This law promised ‘self-governance’ via self-management, self-education, which were soon reconceived as democratic election, decision making, management, and supervision. Since then, ‘grassroots democracy’ has become a term freighted with controversy for those who study Chinese politics.

Judging by procedures alone, village elections have achieved much. Surveys and direct observation by international monitors also show that the conduct of elections (including nomination procedures, competitiveness, and secret balloting) has improved over time. By many indicators, the future of grassroots democracy in China is bright, much as
Shi foresaw some years ago. When tracing the introduction of village
elections, Shi highlighted the role of democratically committed midlevel officials in
the Ministry of Civil Affairs who employed an incremental approach that focused on
extent first and quality later. This explanation accords nicely with most theories of
democratization and its diffusion, and their emphasis on the role of leaders and their
decisions.

Is rural China on the path to democracy that Shi and others have suggested? Viewing the
mountain of evidence now available in light of the literature on democratization, we re-examine the practice of self-governance and suggest that the working definition of democracy adopted by most observers, which underscores its procedural components, is incomplete. This definition, in a word, leads analysts to over emphasize form at the expense of content. Instead, we follow Sebastian and suggest a distinction between two dimensions of democratization, namely access to power and exercise of power. The introduction of elections has indeed begun to change the way in which village authorities gain power, but this has not necessarily transformed the way they exercise that power. Reducing rural democracy to well-run elections oversimplifies the complexity of the local power configuration and turns village governance into much less than it is.