The Research Of The Voting Rights In China Since The Foundation Of The State

The right to vote derives from the theories of ’natural rights’ and ’people’s sovereignty’in the period of western bourgeois revolution. With the victory of western bourgeois revolution and the development of democratic politics, election became to be the main way for citizens to participate in the national politics, and the right to vote also became one of the basic rights, which reflected the essence of representative democracy.After the founding of new China, the Communist Party of China turned the idea of socialism theories into social practice. To implement the people’s democratic dictatorship was the core of the new regime. The priority task of the CPC at that time was to promote the construction of democratic politics by awakening the democratic rights consciousness of the workers and peasants as well as stimulating citizens’ enthusiasm to participate in politics. In1953, it was the first time to put general election into effect. It was a democratic movement leading by the CPC at the beginning of the founding of new country, which insisted on the leadership of working class and focused on the consolidation of worker-peasant alliance and the people’s democratic dictatorship. The first general election is remarkable on the Republic’s democratic construction history. Then, the new electoral system put into practice for the first time. By performing their voting rights, the masses of people set up the thought that the people were the masters of the country. Since the implementation of the first general election and the setting up of the first National People’s Congress, to the held of12th National People’s Congress in2013, the electoral system in our country has been developing sixty years, and people’s right to vote also changed many times. The general election at the beginning deprived the rights of the landlord class molecules who have not changed their identity and the counterrevolutionaries. After the reform and opening up, focus of the debate about the right to vote turned to the inequality proportion problems in urban and rural areas when electing the deputies to the People’s Congress. The right to vote moved towards equality from class leading until2010, when the new electoral law stipulate the same population ratio between urban and rural areas when electing the representatives. There was no doubt that people’s right to vote in our country has made great progress since the foundation of new China. However, it was established on the basis of backward economy and culture, in addition, some problems appeared when putting into practice, these all affecting the electoral system’s democratic process in our country to some extent.For Chinese people, election is the main way to participate in the construction of regime, and it is also the major way to realize the people’s autonomy. The purposes of this paper are to define the development of electoral system in China since1949, to analysis the characteristics of the voting right’s evolution, to clarify the times connotation of the voting right in the changing progress. By observing complicated election phenomenon, this paper hopes to explore the factors which affecting China’s voting right deeply, meanwhile, to provide some useful reference for the construction of contemporary democratic politics.