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[email protected] The contents of China Elections and Governance Review are copyrighted. Reproduction or distribution of the contents without obtaining written permission is a violation of U.S. law. © 2009 Chinaelections.net. All rights reserved. China Elections and Governance Review Issue 2 | May 2009 Dear Readers: The decade from 1998-2008 was an opportunity for political reform in China to take flight on the heels of a great economic transformation. Yet although there were in fact many im- portant experiments in electoral reform during the past ten years, the great promise for ex- panded democratization in China is unfulfilled. Thus, we begin this review in an unorthodox way: with our conclusions. It is our hope that by reading the following pages, the reader will be drawn to make his/her own determinations and to question, analyze and challenge ours. The role of village elections Competitive village elections created a ground swell and led many reform-minded officials to adopt similar measures in the election of officials at higher levels of the government. Follow- ing the bold Buyun direct election in 1998, if the top leadership of the Communisty Party had vision and courage, they could have followed in the footsteps of Deng Xiaoping, Wan Li, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, recognizing Buyun as the “Xiaogang” of political reform.