【Rewind】 People’s Daily | Unanimous election is more dangerous

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March 17, 2011 edition of People’s Daily. The article points out: “In democratic elections, it is difficult to have unanimous support, especially to have a unanimous vote. In a large country like China, disagreement is normal.” “If the practice of unanimous election that kidnaps public opinion continues, the people’s resentment will quietly accumulate.” The column also quotes Lu Xun’s famous saying, strongly warning: “Either in silence, it will erupt, or in silence, it will perish.”

After Xi Jinping was elected with a unanimous vote in 2018, the article began to spread on social media such as WeChat. Netizens used this article to satirize Chinese politics and the contradictory views of People’s Daily.

Five years later, at the Two Sessions in 2023, Xi Jinping was once again elected with a unanimous vote, beginning his third term as President of China. After verification by China Digital Times editors, this article has been deleted from the People’s Daily website, WeChat, Weibo, and other domestic social media platforms.

On March 10, 2023, Xi Jinping was re-elected with a unanimous vote, beginning his third term

This year coincides with the year of the four-level party committees of provinces, cities, counties, and townships, and many provinces and cities have already started comprehensively, but many local party committee members and secretaries have been elected with unanimous votes, which is worth pondering. From the surface, the unanimous vote shows that the local party organizations and party members are very cohesive, and all the comrades who participated in the election talk about politics and take the overall situation into consideration. They are in unison, and there is no discordant voice.

However, in general, truly democratic elections rarely have a one-sided phenomenon, let alone a unanimous vote. At the recently concluded National People’s Congress, all reports did not pass with a unanimous vote, and there were more or less some votes against. Because China is so big, it is impossible for everyone to be satisfied with anything, and there will always be people who make different voices. Even in the party’s elections involving a large number of people, it is difficult to reach an agreement by everyone, and no one has any opinions. Moreover, our country is currently in a period of social transformation, and there are still various problems that need to be solved, and social contradictions still exist.

A unanimous vote may be that the election has kidnapped public opinion, it cannot represent the will of the people, even if it is a party committee election, a unanimous vote is not likely to be the will of all party members with the qualifications to vote, not the true expression of the voters. It is the special choices they make under special circumstances. Our party’s democratic centralism requires individuals to obey the organization, but the election should be that individuals elect the organization, rather than the organization requires individuals to elect what kind of organization. The election of the new term should be less obedience and more democracy. If this continues, their resistance consciousness will accumulate in silence, and the consequences will be terrible, and one day it will erupt, just like Lu Xun said, “Either in silence, it will perish, or in silence, it will erupt.”

Moreover, if the nominated candidates are elected with a unanimous vote under the background of the organization’s requirements, it will also fuel their sense of superiority, making them unable to see the reality, misjudge the situation, feel that they are already very remarkable, and have the support and support of everyone, but in fact, this is not the case, this is just an illusion, which is not conducive to their work, and not conducive to their decision-making. Born in sorrow and died in ease, a unanimous vote will make them live in a comfortable environment all the time, so that they will lose their sense of worry, lose their sense of urgency, and their sense of crisis, even if they are in a complex and severe social environment, they will not be aware of the crisis.