Chinese Farmers’ Political Participation To The Social Stratification

After reform and opening up, as the system of economy and politicsadvanced, there has a huge gap among individuals in occupation, incomeand social status, which made differentiation in rural areas and got differentclasses. However, the differentiation doesn’t make an ideal environment forcountryside, that is, wealth in economy, democracy in politics and harmonyin society. Own to the unfair distribution of wealth and interests, lead to adrastic contradiction among peasants, complied with a phenomenon ofnon-institutionalized political participation to farmers,which threatenedthe harmony and stability of rural areas, and not beneficial for thedevelopment of China’ democratic politics. Political participation, as thecore content of the modern democratic politics, is an important means forpeasants to get self-interests.The level of farmers’ political participation isone of the important foundations to achieve harmonious development inrural areas and realize political democracy. Therefore, there has greatsignificance to study the chinese farmers’ political participation.In accordance with standards of income, occupation, prestige and socialstatus, the villagers of G Village, Anhui Province, is divided into threeclasses: personage, civilian, poor. The three classes’ political participation insome aspects are the same. The characterizes are as following: politicalparticipation on the whole at a low level and imbalanced to different classes;enthusiasm and indifference co-exist, acts lag behind political conscious;non-institutionalized political participation is in a expand trend; diversification of political consciousness and complication of politicalbehavior. For China, political democracy can’t be realized without thesupport of majority peasants and the fair of political participation, weproposed following countermeasures to improve the level of farmerspolitical participation: boom rural education for improvement of peasants’quality, develop rural economy for fairness of farmers, cultivate farmers’consciousness of politics and rights for standardization of farmers’ politicalacts, improve farmers’ organizational degree for advancement ofparticipation, broaden farmers institutionalized channels of politicalparticipation for smoothness of peasants political participation.