YES I CAN:A Chinese voting card (LUO XIAOGUANG)

Xu Yan is a busy man. Starting May 26 this year, he has been campaigning for the election of the Xiacheng District People's Congress, Hangzhou City, capital of Zhejiang Province, which will be held at the end of 2011.

Xu has embraced technology to get his message across. He records his weekly speeches on video and posts them on his microblog and other popular video websites every week.  

"Preparing for the election is my main preoccupation now and I must do whatever I can to tell my supporters what I can do for them," the 28-year-old freelance worker told ChinAfrica. "For me, the campaign is a competition and I must do better than others before I can win."

Voting equity

The period from 2011 through the end of 2012 sees the election of deputies to a new term of office of people's congresses at the county and township levels nationwide.

Like Xu, many people are participating in the local office election, a process reported by the Chinese media to be the world's biggest congress election. Statistics show that over 2 million deputies to the county/township level people's congresses will be directly elected. The entire process involves more than 2,000 county-level governments and more than 30,000 township-level governments.

"Undoubtedly, this world largest electorate group vote will not only directly influence the structure of the grossroots legislation bodies and governments, but also have a great deal to do with China's social stability and development in the future," said Zhang Qianfan, Professor at Peking University Law School, commenting on China Newsweek Online.

According to the Chinese Constitution, deputies to the county- and township-level people's congresses are directly elected by voters of their respective constituencies and they are responsible for electing the governments of the same levels and people's congresses of higher levels.

In addition, this is the first election after the National People's Congress modified China's Election Law in early March 2011. According to the modification, both rural and urban areas should adopt the same ratio in the number of deputies to the represented population in the election, giving rural residents as much say in the decision-making bodies as their urban counterparts.

Zhang noted that this is a great progress in China's democracy process. According to the Election Law of 1953, the number of rural residents represented by a deputy in the people's congress was eight-fold that of an urban deputy.

This modification means that farmers can have more deputies expressing their views in China's legislative bodies.