P Village Farmers. Binchuan Political Participation

Political participation is one of the most important parts of modern political life, is the essential expression and distinctive characteristic of democracy, and also is the major concern of most politicians. China is a large agricultural country with the countryside population dominant, and then farmers'participation in politics becomes one of the essential parts during the development of democracy. Because that the democracy construction of China would be reflected through the level to which peasants' participation in political is involved, we can state that the level of peasants' political participation will exert great influence on the development of Chinese politics. However, China has a vast territory and a huge population, the patterns of economy, culture and politics differ from each other from region to region. Therefore, the depth and breadth of peasants'political participation also vary largely accordingly to the region. In this paper, in order to examine whether the theories about peasants'political participation are put into force or not, also to represent the actual situation of peasants' political participation, I conducted a study based on a village which I named it P in the following paragraphs and is representative in regional environment and population composition.Based on the studies of other scholars', I analyzed the current situation of peasants'political participation in village P by combining 5 research methods, documental analysis, case study method, interviewing method, standard research method and empirical approach. This paper is divided into four parts:introduction, the analysis of peasants'political participation in village P, the elements that exert influence on peasants' political participation in village P, and the potential ways to broaden and deepen peasants'participation in politics.In the first part, I made a statement to illustrate the reason why I chose this topic, the meaning to research this project the current situation of peasants' political participation in China, the definitions of some theories concerning political participation, and also my own understanding about these political theories. And in the second part, I made a brief introduction about village P, such as the composition of its population, the regional environment, and also I represented the characteristics of peasants'political participation in village P. According to the elite theory, I separated the political participation into three levels:the participation of village officials, the participation of the respected villagers, and the participation of the average ones. And in this part, I also mentioned the characteristics of peasants'political participation in village P, including 5 points:the low level of political participation, the passivity and individuality taking a great part in political participation, the combination of institutionalized politics and non-institutionalized politics while mainly basing on the institutionalized one, indifference to political issues and gender inequality in political participation. The following session is about the elements that influence the peasants' political participation in village, including economic element, political culture element, the quality of peasants and social political element. And the last session concerns the way to extend the political participation in village P. And in my opinion, we can achieve the goal through four methods:the first method is to provide the essential material base for the villagers by developing village economy; the second one is that the government have to guarantee that the villagers have the right to participate in politics; the third one is to improve villagers'ability to participate in the administration and discussion of nation affairs through the cultural construction in the countryside; and the last one is to strengthen the social roots for peasants'political participation by developing social organization in rural areas.