A small experiment in democracy in China

As forces beyond your power decide your few choices for the next president of the United States, it’s a good time to watch “Please Vote for Me,” a heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking little documentary on democracy as practiced -- but certainly not made perfect -- in a Chinese third-grade classroom.

Airing tonight on PBS as a presentation of “Independent Lens,” it is one of a number of films made as part of a South Africa-based global project called “Why Democracy?” (At least one other film from the series, “The Iron Ladies of Liberia,” is scheduled to run on PBS in March 2008, but most will not.) The question is not meant as rhetorical.

Although director Weijun Chen’s film about the election of a class monitor in the central-China city of Wuhan seems to document an independently occurring event -- as if the Chinese government were preparing its citizens for a new political process bearing down on them as certainly as the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing -- the event was in fact arranged specifically for the film by Chen as a kind of experiment. (His surreptitiously shot 2002 film “To Live Is Better Than to Die,” about HIV/AIDS in rural China, won a Peabody Award, among other honors.)

It is not a wholly successful experiment, one would say, though some might contend that democracy is an experiment that Americans are still trying to make come out right -- or not trying, as the case may be. A right to vote is meaningless without an informed, conscientious and empowered electorate, and you are only going to get so much of that from a group of 8- and 9-year-olds, considering how little of it you get from grown-ups.

Although occasionally practiced in a small, local way in China, democracy remains essentially a controversial, foreign idea there. “Isn’t this new?” the teacher asks, having described the electoral process to her students. “Very different than before.” Still, the adults seem to understand the process well enough -- and also how it may be manipulated. China’s one-child policy is also an only-child policy, and the candidates’ parents become deeply involved in the election, prodding and stage-managing and rehearsing their little Clintons and Romneys. (Among other things, the film is an intriguing glimpse into ordinary Chinese family life.)

We meet incumbent Luo Lei, ambitious challenger Cheng Cheng and Xu Xiaofei, who is a girl and therefore attacked as hysterical. “I don’t cry that much anymore since the third grade,” she replies.

The campaign is framed as a “talent contest” -- singing and dancing and flute playing apparently count for as much as the speeches and debates. And there is the added element of Communist criticism and self-criticism (“the only effective way to prevent all kinds of political dust and germs from contaminating the minds of our comrades and the body of our Party,” according to old Chairman Mao) and their attendant rituals of shame and apology, which can seem remarkably exotic viewed from a culture practically without shame.

The candidates wear red kerchiefs and sing revolutionary songs, and their calisthenic routines look nothing like ours; in one sequence, the kids rub their faces in a manner reminiscent of nothing so much as Brian Keith getting bad news on “Family Affair.” They speak of “chi” and “karma.” But the political world they enter -- or create -- is a familiar one, characterized by bribery, cronyism, demagoguery, character assassination and pledges made merely to persuade.

“You need some tricks,” Luo Lei’s parents tell him. “And a plan.”

“I don’t want to control others,” he responds. “They should think for themselves.” But as often happens, the principled candidate capitulates to his advisors, buying votes with class treats and trips.

Cheng Cheng, clearly the cleverest of the three, appeals (at first) to the basest instincts of the mob, and has no trouble telling a lie or two if it will work for him -- indeed, like the successful politician he promises to make, he doesn’t even appear to realize he’s lying.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘Independent Lens: Please Vote for Me’

Where: KCET

When: 10 to 11 tonight

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)