A GRASS-ROOTS activist in Guangzhou province has been left off a list of candidates in this autumn’s local-level People’s Congress elections as the ruling Communist Party seeks to keep a tight leash on even this limited form of democracy.
However, Liang Shuxin, founder of a group called “Micro-Foundation”, whose platform includes free school lunches for kids, remains defiant.
The local election process runs for several weeks and in the past two months more than 100 independent candidates have announced their candidacy online and have used online postings and social media sites to gain support.
However, the Communist government has clamped down, saying there is no such a thing as an independent candidate because it is not recognised by law.
Despite the ruling against independent candidates, Mr Liang stuck with the process. But before the candidates were due to be appointed, the rules in his Lijiang district were mysteriously altered.
On August 18th, the neighbourhood committee announced a quota that restricts the candidates to non-Chinese Communist Party members and to women only. The restriction was removed the following day.
Clearly Mr Liang’s grassroots activism did not go down well with the Communist Party. However, Mr Liang is a party member.
His campaign promises seem innocuous enough. His election slogan was “Elect a neighbour to be your representative” and showed a picture of him holding a bag of shopping.
However, the clampdown on independent candidates is the latest evidence that the leadership wants tight political control as it prepares for a succession next year from Chinese president Hu Jintao to his presumed heir, vice-president Xi Jinping.
And after a flurry of online activism following the poor handling of the Wenzhou high-speed rail disaster last month, the government is more keen than ever to keep a lid on any message that does not tow the Party line.
Mr Liang has remained upbeat. He wrote an open letter describing August 24th, the day the neighbourhood committee issued the list of candidates without his name on it, as a “thrilling day”.
“In the end my name did not appear as a candidate but we won the hearts of the people and the truth. We gained strong support of netizens all over China and the help of Lijiang locals,” he wrote.