Candidates for deputy department director posts in the Sichuan provincial government participate in a field survival program in September 2005.	Xu Benyu, a 25-year-old volunteer teacher in a mountainous region, was elected deputy to the 17th CPC National Congress.	A cadre selection examination in Jiangsu Province.

“Congratulations, you are elected a deputy to the 17th National Party Congress” -- was the text message Xu Benyu, a postgraduate from Huazhong Agricultural University in Hunan Province, received on his cell phone last June while in Zimbabwe, where he was working as a volunteer. The 25-year-old’s euphoria at this news lasted a full two hours. This is understandable, in view of Xu’s being accepted into the CPC a mere five years previously, yet finding himself about to participate in the highest organ of China’s ruling party.

Xu became known in China through his story of striving through adversity and his generosity to others, as published on the Internet. Xu is the son of a poor peasant in Shandong Province. He needed to do several odd jobs in order to pay his way through college. But all scholarships and grants that he received towards his studies he, in turn, donated to younger students in impoverished regions. Xu suspended his postgraduate study to teach in an isolated mountainous village, and later established an educational foundation based on public donations. Xu Benyu was chosen as one of CCTV’s Ten Persons that Move China in 2004, and was also one of the Ten Charity Stars of China of 2005.

Xu was one of three students that his university nominated out of 60 contenders, whose names were placed on the shortlist of Hunan Province delegates to the 17th CPC National Congress. Xu was stunned on being picked . His comment on this honor: “I thought delegates to the congress should have remarkable achievements in their fields. As I have yet to graduate, my career slate is blank.”

The odds of being selected from among 70 million CPC members all over China to occupy one of the 2,000-odd seats in this national, quinquennial event that defines the direction of the Party and the nation in the next five years, and whose participants are picked over a multi-stratum democratic process, are truly slim.

Xu’s professor Chen Shu hailed Xu’s admission to the session. “As a young volunteer teacher in China’s least developed regions, Xu Benyu can speak on behalf of those working at the forefront of China’s education, and attract needed attention to the issue of education in poor mountainous areas.” From a broader perspective, Xu’s election indicates Communist Party efforts to enlarge the presence of new economic and social organizations within its leading organ, so giving voice to the thoughts and needs of Party members from all walks of life.

Delegates to the 17th CPC National Congress are unprecedentedly diversified in background, as well as generally younger and with a better education background than the majority of previous delegates.

More Democracy

Mao Zedong made the famous remarks back in the 1930s that, among the many things missing in China at that time, the two most critical were independence and democracy, without which China could not be well administrated. The Communist Party's establishment of local governments via general elections during the 1940s won wide support among the people. After founding of the People’s Republic, however, China, in common with the then Soviet Union and other socialist nations of the world, adopted the cadre appointment system. Three decades later, Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China’s opening and reform, on seeing the extent of time-consuming, ritualistic bureaucracy that this system generated, eventually abolished life tenure for Party leaders.

The CPC started reforms of the cadre selection system in the late 1980s within grassroots organizations and in the countryside. The first step was to introduce direct elections into the rural autonomous organization, the Villagers’ Committee. They soon became law, and had spread to more than 90 percent of the nation’s rural areas by the end of the millennium.

Throughout this process there was a call from among farmers for a greater level of democracy in governments at township level, which constitute the extensive substratum of China’s state power hierarchy. Candidates for the post of chief of the 40,000-odd townships across China had conventionally been decided at high level caucuses and were consequently often voted in without rivals. Having been selected at this rarefied level, local officials felt no obligation to heed public opinion as their political career depended solely on their ability to impress their superiors.

This convention has changed in recent years, particularly since 2004, when a string of measures and regulations from the CPC Central Committee subjected cadre selection to standard legal procedures and public scrutiny.

In honoring the Party’ avowed intention to to “give full play to democracy and remain in close contact with the people,” the 17th CPC National Congress increased the proportion of multi-candidate elections for deputies to 15 percent -- 5 percent higher than the previous session. Inviting comments from the electorate on relevant candidates via placards, and soliciting the opinions of non-Communist parties, associations of industry and commerce, and non-affiliated people were practices previously unheard of in New China political history.

A Younger, Better-educated Contingent

The Chinese government raised the idea of cultivating younger, more competent cadres that are professionally capable as well as politically impeccable in the late 1980s. “There have been remarkable achievements in this aspect. The 'third echelon,' whose knowledge of politics is no greater than previously appointed older officials, is gradually superseding them,” so stated Wang Changjiang, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee. Many of the cadre reserve that China began cultivating in the 1980s have already ascended to high or medium-rank government posts. This trend is particularly prominent at the county level.

China articulated the demand that the majority of county leaders emerging from the reelection of county magistrates of 2006 be around 45 years old, and have at least a bachelor’s degree . One county official in Northeast China recalls that few others in the region below the age of 50 had been appointed magistrate in the past decade.

This age cap and higher academic benchmark have effectively scrapped the long-enduring Chinese governmental practice of assigning nomination priority according to seniority. Current Chinese officials are consequently aware of mounting pressure to merit their jobs. A survey conducted among officials above county level prior to the 16th CPC National Congress revealed that 35.7 percent felt incapable of dealing with complex situations.

Liu Yandong, director of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, has also stated that the CPC is to open more government posts to non-Communists, including those of new social strata and returned overseas Chinese. A large number of cadres who have studied abroad are actually appearing in provincial and ministerial ranks. They share the merits of international perspective, a democratic, rule of law mindset, and of being seasoned in market economy. As an article in the Hunan Daily declared: “Though the time has not arrived for returned overseas students to enter the core leadership of the Communist Party of China, they are marching toward that end, and have successfully broken into ministerial ranks.” If the term “returned overseas students” is extended to include those attending training courses abroad as well as those with foreign diplomas, it includes a good share of Chinese officials.

In contrast to their predecessors -- officials who were sent to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1950s -- the new generation of overseas students-turned-cadres have studied mainly in developed nations, are larger in number -- one million or more -- and specialized in a wider range of sciences. The knowledge and influence they gain in their North American and EU host countries is bound to promote practice of the market economy and rule of law in China.

As one observer commented, “China has launched an overseas study onslaught, unprecedented in size, duration, and prospective impact on the nation, all of which will be born out in 10 or 20 years.”

Notes
How were deputies to the 17th CPC National Congress elected?

The 2,217 deputies to the congress were elected from among the 70 million CPC members all over China by more than 99 percent of grassroots Party organizations. The participation rate of Party members exceeded 98 percent.

The first step was for provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities to distribute deputy quotas (which could be in the same amount as, or no more than five times that received from the CPC Central Committee), to their respective electoral units. Party branches in these units then proposed lists of nominees, following the majority rule, which they passed to their unit Party Committees. The committees’ choices of candidate, based on the opinion of the majority of Party branches, and as long as no objections were raised by the relevant party branches, were then reported to Party Committees at county (county-level city) level. Further similar panning out occurred at at the county (or country-level city) and city/prefecture Party Committee levels. A shortlist of candidates was thus compiled.

What is the retirement age for Chinese officials?

Since Deng Xiaoping abolished cadre life-long tenure in the 1980s, a new Chinese governmental convention, whereby national leaders retire at around 70, ministers at 65 and deputy ministers and prefecture/bureau directors at 60, has been accepted. Cadres of an age exceeding 50 cannot, in principle, be promoted to county magistrate posts.

Ministers with overseas study background

Hua Jianmin, state councilor and secretary general of the State Council: trained in steam turbine technique in the US from June to September, 1982.

Yang Jiechi, foreign minister: student of international relations at the London School of Economic and Political Science from January 1973, to June 1975.

Zhou Ji, education minister: master’s and doctor’s degrees in mechanics obtained from the State University of New York in the early 1980s.

Chen Zhu, health minister: doctorate from the Universite Paris VII in 1989, and also academician at the Third World Academy of Sciences, European Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences.

Wan Gang, science and technology minister: studied a doctorate in mechanics at Technische Uni.Clausthal, Germany, from 1985 to 1991.

Xie Fuzhan, director of the National Bureau of Statistics: visiting scholar to Princeton University from 1991 to 1992.

Tian Lipu, director of the State Intellectual Property Office: visiting scholar to the Max Planck Institute, Germany; also researcher at the European Patent Office, German Patent and Trademark Office and Deutschland Federal Patent Court.

Zhou Xiaochuan, president of People's Bank of China: studied in the U.S