This book examines China’s grassroots electoral experiments and their transformation into instruments of centralized political control. It provides the first comprehensive, historically grounded analysis of village, township, and consultative elections from the 1980s to the present.

Tracing the rise of “sea elections” and their gradual institutional containment, the book shows how limited democratic practices emerged within a one-party system and were later restructured to reinforce state authority. It introduces the concept of “top-down governance logic” to explain how electoral participation can coexist with authoritarian resilience. Combining long-term field research, archival materials, and comparative political analysis, the book situates China’s experience within broader debates on authoritarian governance, democratic experimentation, political reform, and adaptive legitimacy. It demonstrates how elections in China functioned simultaneously as experiments in participation and mechanisms of political consolidation.

Sam Lee, Ph.D. (University of Antwerp, 1992), is Professor of Political Science and former Visiting Professor at the University of Zurich. An award-winning scholar, he received the IASIA Pierre de Celle Award (2012). He is the author of numerous books, including Public Administration Theories, Trump and the Hidden Empire, and The Glory Trap.