ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the local factor in the CCP's inchoate intra-Party democracy. It argues that intra-Party democracy-especially with its new central-local dynamics can provide an incremental, manageable, and orderly experiment in Chinese-style democracy. Based on CCP regulations and norms, provincial chiefs with Politburo membership have an older retirement age. In general, major personnel and policy decisions are now often decided by voting in various committees, rather than solely by the committee's Party chief. China's democratic experiments in terms of intra-Party democracy and political institutionalization apparently have serious limitations. It has been widely noticed, particularly in the China-study communities overseas, that China's political reforms, including intra-party democracy, have made almost no progress at all since the Fourth Plenary of the 17th Central Committee in the fall of 2009. Newly developed institutional experiments discussed in this chapter can either fail or lead to further and greater changes if the system is genuinely resilient.
