Astralis,
Do the village elections count for all that much? I always figured them for some sort of a sop to the people tbh.
From what I read, the elected headman, although in a manner the voice for the villagers, still had to co-operate with the local cadre or party secretary, whose opinion ultimately mattered. Slowly by slowly, voter numbers have begun dropping due to this tension between the chief and the local secretary.
(Then again, I took relatively few courses on comparative politics, particularly Chinese politics.
)