Democratic thought and practice in rural China

Chinese democratization is usually thought of as a top-down process sponsored by a reform-minded government and liberal intellectuals. At the turn of the millennium, however, no such development is in sight. Only recently have Western scholars begun to look to the countryside for finding 'sprouts of democracy'. This study explores village self-government as a possibility of making local political practices the foundation of an emerging rights consciousness that becomes increasingly abstract and finally transgresses into the national sphere. Central to the argument is the dynamic of the village moral economy that produces a common good and 'collectivity'. These are serving as the pillars of all political claims that rise from the villages. In the process of appropriating an ongoing national discourse on political reform and democracy, China's peasants translate their entitlements derived from the moral economy of the village into rights, by way of informing a moral contract between them and authority. This contract may lay the ground for full-scale resistance, if the state and its cadres do not respond to the peasants' 'rightful' demands. However, if it is honoured it can reinforce trust and secure the current regime's legitimacy. © 2005 Taylor & Francis.