Signposts of inner-party democratization
David Bandurski at CMP summarizes media attention surrounding the 'historic list' of congressional delegates and other political matters, and offers a quantitative analysis of the coverage:
How significant are those numbers? At this point, they are more symbolic than anything else. Consider that with 30 provinces and autonomous regions in China, there are just over 300 differential candidates, or an average of around 11 per province. That means that in the vast majority of voting districts (county or city, etc.) there are no additional candidates. While party members are theoretically tasked with "electing" their delegates, there are in most cases no decisions to be made.