Just as some despair that democracy’s sun is setting in the West, a new study suggests it is rising anew in the East – in authoritarian China. Three months ago, the world’s media reported with amazement a successful election in Wukan, a fishing village in the country’s southeast. 6,000 villagers were allowed to vote in a Western-style free and fair election – secret ballots and all. But Beijing’s experiments in rural democracy are not new; they go almost three decades further back. How has it worked out? For the first time, we have some data.
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