Striking a Balance between Contradictory Roles: The Overlapping Role Perceptions of the Deputies in China’s Local People’s Congresses

Abstract

Recent studies have begun to pay increasing attention to congressional representation in China. Based on selected cases or surveys of one province or another, such studies seek to demonstrate that the deputies of local people’s congresses (LPCs) increasingly identify themselves as representatives of citizens rather than as state agents. This article, using data from a national survey conducted in 2014, explores how deputies at the county level perceive their role and what accounts for their different role perceptions. It argues that LPC deputies as a whole perceive that they have overlapping roles that could be defined as neither state agents nor citizen representatives. Rather, they try to strike a balance between seemingly contradictory roles. Deputies’ social background and political attitudes have a significant effect on their role perceptions while electoral incentives make little difference. A sense of congressional representation develops when deputies gradually come to grips with the tension between the different roles and choose to give up roles other than citizen representatives.