Quotes of the Day

By noon on Oct. 13, Ye Jing-Chun's bouquet was wilting under the Beijing sun. The 55-year-old retired bureaucrat had been pacing the alley by the Chaoyang district police station, waiting for Wu Lihong, a fellow candidate in local elections, to be released from 15 days' detention. But Wu wasn't freed and as the hours crept by, Ye's lilies and roses continued to droop. Plainclothes thugs with thick necks, military-style buzz cuts and video cameras patrolled the alley. A pair of Foreign Affairs police officers arrived to investigate the international journalists gathered on the scene. Still no Wu. The next day, her brother finally got a call from her saying she had been forced to fly to southwestern China with government minders. Chinese politics had claimed another victim.

Every five years in China, direct elections are held for 2 million representatives to local people's congresses, the lowest and a largely powerless rung of government. For decades, these polls have tended to be stage-managed affairs with state-approved candidates. But with frustration over official ineptitude boiling over, and with digital communications and social media making it easier to exchange and pool ideas, the elections are now drawing large numbers of independent candidates. There are thousands — perhaps even tens of thousands — of such candidates trying to run in elections that began this spring and continue through next year. Each of them is counting on laws that make nearly anyone 18 or older, who garners 10 signatures from constituents, eligible to stand in local balloting. At the same time, they incur the displeasure of the Communist Party, which has ruled unchallenged for more than six decades and which in practice determines the composition of representative bodies at every level.

Political aspirants range from lawyers and farmers to pensioners and even a leggy model. Hundreds have begun campaigns online through Chinese social-networking sites that, despite some restrictions, allow citizens normally limited by censorship of traditional media to connect in unprecedented ways. "My main reason for running is to let everyone know they have the right to vote and the right to stand as a candidate," says Li Zhiyong, a 41-year-old lawyer in the wealthy southern city of Shenzhen who declared his candidacy online in May. "A lot of people don't even know the basic procedure of elections, and I want to educate them about their rights."

The central government appeared, at first, to accept this grassroots activism, even as more explosive displays of people power in the Arab world were unnerving party leaders. Earlier this year, state-run media published cheery articles about unlikely candidates for local legislatures, including a high school student in Shenzhen with a passion for politics. But by June, the backlash — inevitable, it now feels, for a regime paranoid about any challenge to its power — had begun. "There is no such thing as an 'independent candidate,'" declared Xinhua, the state newswire. It said that while the law gives citizens "the right to vote and to be elected," various requirements had to be met before electoral officials approved a candidacy.

Intimidation of independents intensified. Some faced curiously timed tax audits and gave up their political ambitions. Others were locked up until their local polls closed. Still others discovered their names were missing from official candidate lists or complained of voter-roll or ballot-counting irregularities. The Shenzhen teenager's campaign practically disappeared from the blogosphere. In late September, a farmer from a village near the southern city of Foshan became the first known independent candidate to win during this election cycle. But hours after his victory, he was put under house arrest for days. In mid-October, reports surfaced in Shanghai that a man may have been beaten to death by a gang charged with intimidating voters.

Why is the government reacting so harshly? China today is unquestionably more prosperous than it was five years ago, when local polls were last held. But it is also more unstable, with farmers and white collar workers alike fed up with local corruption and widening income gaps. Last year, 180,000 "mass incidents" of protest took place, according to one Beijing academic, a huge increase from the 74,000 reported in 2004. As a result, Chinese spending on "internal security," a designation that includes everything from building jails to harassing dissidents, jumped by nearly 14% this year, to $95 billion. So important is what China calls "stability maintenance" that local officials' promotions are usually tied to their success in suppressing unrest. Any expression of political independence — even if it's over an issue as innocuous as a public-school bus route — can be viewed as inviting instability. "Almost none of the independent candidates will win," says Li Fan, who runs the World and China Institute in Beijing. Still, the veteran civil-society activist is hopeful about the better-known ones. "Through [social media] you now have a group of leaders who are famous. The Communist Party cannot be closed forever, and when time comes for reform, these are the people who carry our hopes."

The superstar of the rock-China vote is Li Chengpeng, a charismatic ex-sports journalist who seems as proud of his son's tennis game as he is of his new political pastime. The 43-year-old is one of China's most irreverent social critics and, with 3.74 million microblog followers, one of the country's biggest online personalities. In May, he declared his intention to run for a seat in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Sina Weibo — a Twitter-style service with 200 million users that has flourished in China (Twitter itself is banned). Within a couple of hours, around 3,000 people had posted excited comments about his announcement; by June around a hundred others had declared their candidacies on Sina Weibo, and many more followed later in the summer. "For many intellectuals, being detached seems to be an easy way out," Li wrote in his online manifesto. "[But] I am eager to tell everyone that we are all shareholders of our country."

Courage Under Fire
Despite his popularity, Li's campaign is hamstrung by officials. He can't print campaign posters. He can't give political speeches at public gatherings. He can't even get the local election committee to tell him exactly when the polls will be. "I'm worried that if I leave town for a couple weeks, they'll hold the elections when I'm gone," he says. The best-selling author is now facing other woes. A 180,000-word manuscript he recently submitted to the censors — a normal process in China — came back with 130,000 words excised, and rumors are floating online that he is dropping out of the race. Li remains defiant. "Everything I do, every call I make, is known by the authorities, so you can say I live a Truman Show existence," he says. "But I'm never going to give up my candidacy."

If a celebrity has so much trouble campaigning, consider the trio of women aiming to run in the port city of Tianjin. They have no expectations of winning or of even getting their names on the ballot. In fact, entrepreneur Ma Huixia admits that until she was politicized by what she says was unfair treatment of her son by officialdom a couple of years ago, she was part of a local committee that went door to door advising voters which three of five candidates they should vote for, lest their ballots be declared invalid. "The government says it serves the people, but that's a joke," Ma says, before being interrupted by a phone call from a public-security officer monitoring her whereabouts. "So what has to happen is for normal people to do the job our corrupt leaders aren't doing." Fellow Tianjin aspirant Dai Xiuying, who was twice thrown into one of China's so-called black jails (detention facilities that aren't part of the court-bound prison system), puts it more starkly: "As citizens, we must fight for our dignity. Otherwise we are just living dead."

Back in Beijing, an illusion of electoral freedom continues. Across the capital, giant banners proclaim: VOTING IS GLORIOUS. VOTING IS A BASIC RIGHT OF CITIZENS. Pamphlets distributed in homes say elections show that China "belongs to the people."

Independent candidate Ye, who carried the flowers for her detained colleague, doesn't believe a word of it. "These are elections with Chinese characteristics," she says. "The government will pressure my supporters. If a candidate has a job, their boss will push them to stop running. Candidates are put in jail. I knew that running would be difficult, but I never thought it would be this bad." As she talks, six security officers video and photograph her, and she stops to smile and wave at them.

At the police station with Ye on Oct. 13 were Zhan Jiang, a 34-year-old Communist Party member, and Liu Sumin, a 72-year-old retiree. They are part of a group of 13 independent candidates in Beijing who joined together in September to put their campaign pledges online. All have faced official surveillance, with some enduring what is known as "administrative detention," or incarceration without trial. When the three returned home from their fruitless wait for Wu's release, they were placed under virtual house arrest with 24-hour guards. Wu herself can no longer run. Her political rights were stripped because of her 15 days in custody — it's no coincidence, her family says, that she was jailed for exactly the amount of time that would disqualify her from standing.

The last her brother heard, Wu was being forced to tour Mount Emei — a Buddhist place of atonement in southwestern China. People go from all over the country to meditate at Mount Emei and confess their misdeeds to the bodhisattva who gained enlightenment on the sacred peak. For China's paranoid leaders, it seems that the simple act of running for election is a sin requiring expiation and forgiveness from the heavens.

— with reporting by Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing

• Hannah Beech / Beijing
• Across China, thousands are standing in local polls as independent candidates, risking harsh retribution