China

There is no legislation regarding Participatory Budgeting in any level of the Chinese government.

Compared to the Wenling model of 2005, the Haikou’s new one makes it possible for all citizens to vote since 2016. However, the 2019 design does not possess that kind of innovation. Nevertheless, the Participatory Budgeting process has implemented something new in 2019, it collaborated with the local government more closely.

In Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, PB has been used in the Reconstruction of Old Community Project. Most of the ROCP projects are in old urban zones, in order to make the community more resource-saving and environment-friendly. These reconstruction projects have more funds. Hence, the PB gets more budget for people to decide. Also, these projects may benefit every house owner.

PB is needed in order to provide more legitimacy to the community. Residents behave even more actively in this kind of projects; they think of more proposals and dialogue for their favourite ones on round-table discussions and vote them.

This represents a good advancement for PB, which means that PB in China is coming to a mainstream use in the city’s construction. The budget used in PB processes expands and it empowers citizens. However, it just means PB goes deeper in China, not on the upper side. With this new trend, it shows little possibility that these days PB experiences can activate the People’s Congress or even become a legislation. The more the government uses PB as a tool, the less the PB can perform its strengths in improving civil society ‘s autonomy.

The Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC) is the first agency that introduced the PB in China in 2006. DRC is a comprehensive policy research and consulting institution directly under the State Council, the central government of the PRC. They organized a visit to Brazil and then chose to implement PB in Harbin and Wuxi.

Although it was the first time PB was implemented in China, it didn’t continue for too long, one reason is that the local governments didn’t realize the importance of citizen participation. They applied it because it was an initiative from the central government, not because they believed in it. According to one official who visited Brazil, he mentioned that “This citizen-led PB is not proper for China”.

Chinese famous PB case is Wenling, it is a purely a Chinese model. It’s a method that activates the People’s Congress in budget reform. By giving back the reviewing right to the People’s Congress, finally, citizens get the chance to participate in the decision-making process.

In 2016, the China Institute visited NYC and then created and applied a similar model in Haikou, Nanchang, and Soochow. This model used the ballot for the first time in Chinese PB and gave every citizen the right to vote. Different from the DRC, WCI is an NGO, which means those local governments implementing PB must have more passion. This new model is still spreading across China.

Welling’s PB marks a great leap in Chinese PB development as well as in the political reform agenda. It has become an icon of deliberative democracy. It is also too radical for other places to implement it in the same way.

In 2016, Haikou’s new PB won the acknowledgement of both the citizens and officials. So, it was implemented in Nanchang and Soochow. The new model is easier to spread because it is not involved in institutional changes.

1. PB have been suspended: 0%
2. PB continued to function normally: 0%
3. PB have undergone changes/adaptations: 100%

The outbreak of COVID-19 is forcing China and the world to revaluate its governance and priority work. So far, we can’t tell the scientific truth about its origin, but certainly, the clusters of mass cases reported began in Wuhan, Hubei provinces in China. Almost all Chinese suffered a severe medical breakdown experience and mental trauma during the 2020 Lunar New Year. Therefore, all of that has contributed to a specific epidemicsfighting model of China.

As power is concentrated in the hands of the CCP, the party decides what’s the most important thing for the country. It used to be material prosperity, but now it’s restrained. That means all the normal activities are working for fighting the epidemic; economic development and other projects like Participatory Budgeting are stepping back in order to accomplish this.

Until the middle of 2020 (although some cities’ annual processes have been postponed for months) Chinese Participatory Budgeting hasn’t been affected much by Covid-19. There are two reasons: first, this year’s PB plan has already been decided before the Lunar New Year. Second, different cities respond differently regarding fighting the epidemic. It depended on whether they had zero cases, sporadic ones, clusters, or widespread transmission. Luckily, the cities implementing Participatory Budgeting experiences are not that affected as Wuhan, the epicenter city of COVID-19.

Now the pandemic is under control in China. However, the impact of coronavirus on China’s economy is just beginning. That would further influence the local’s budget as well as the willingness to implement new PB. But the PB has gone through for many years with the budgeting reform, now it links to the party-state’s social autonomy advocate. The new PB case (Haikou) has been awarded as one of the best social innovative works in Hainan province. It may continue to expand in the shadow of Covid-19.

There are other types of PB in China like the Community Competition Model (Maizidian) and the Department Budgeting Model.

During all these years of implementation, what should be called “Participatory Budgeting”? According to different scholars, there are rules that should be taken into account: the fund must come from the public budget, it should be a process that creates deliberation spaces in which citizens can dialog and also that people have the final decision regarding the allocation of the public funds. Thus, from the level of decisionmaking and the width of participation, the Haikou model scores high in all these evaluations, making it a distinctive and a mainstream one in China.

However, how can strong and undemocratic states accomplish good governance? The Haikou Model is unique but still lacks the ability of building new democratic institutions in China. As we mentioned before, it expands year by year but still has no guarantee from the top-administrative level. It works well mainly because it pleases the needs of local government. The dissemination relies mainly on the personal ties of bureau chiefs and staff’s members since there is no promotion from the central government. The Participatory Budgeting in China involves long-term interactions with the government. Therefore, the Haikou model represents substantive progress in this matter, but work needs to be done in order to make it more efficient and to institutionalize it.