In 1980, in the first round of post-Mao county congress elections, scores of grassroots activists in universities and factories across eight provinces vied openly for popular support with bold campaign rhetoric. Although the term “independent candidate” (独立候选人, 独立参选人, 自主参选人) appears nowhere in official pronouncements, Chinese congress scholars and the mass media use it to refer to these activists and subsequent office seekers who mobilize voter support in local congress elections. By any estimate, the sum total of independent candidates is small, though, as I argue in this chapter, probably at least two orders of magnitude greater than estimates in most published accounts. In a book that focuses on the “normal politics” of congressional representation under autocratic rule, why consider the rare event of independent candidates at all?

First and not trivially, independent candidates have legal status. Indeed, as described in Chapter 1 and briefly reprised below, their campaign activities produced major changes in electoral rules in the 1980s, as authorities in Beijing worked to fashion a response to their “excessive democracy” in the first round of elections. These rule changes shaped local congressional representation because they constrained all electoral participants in subsequent rounds. Second, independent candidates are rare because of institutional obstacles reflected in the rules as well as overt (often strictly illegal) repression on the ground: in elections and localities where the authorities condoned or supported the emergence of independent candidates, more of them declared candidacy; at more repressive times and in more repressive places, fewer declared candidacy. Third, the challenge of independent candidates, reflected in both legal status and routine repression, illuminates the normal politics of congressional representation under Chinese autocracy in several ways. Independent candidates present a legitimacy challenge: by campaigning, they affirm the legitimacy of local congresses; yet, widespread repression of them by local authorities actually delegitimizes the congresses, showing the strong hand of the party in its management of candidate selection. Some independent candidates also present an ideological challenge: from activist democrats in 1980 to good governance advocates in 2011 to 2012, a large subset of independent candidates eschewed parochial problems in the voting district to take on fundamental political questions. In addition, especially in the 2011 to 2012 elections, a small number of independent candidates present an organizational challenge: in some localities, they coordinated operationally to support one another by sharing information.