Participatory budgeting at scale and bridging the rural-urban divide in Chengdu

This paper describes the development of the participatory budgeting (PB) process in the rural villages and communities of the city of Chengdu in China between 2009 and 2012. During this period, more than 40,000 PB-funded projects were implemented in more than 2,300 communities. These projects addressed the growing divide between urban and rural development and increased security of land use rights, resulting in large improvements in the day-to-day lives of millions of villagers. But PB in Chengdu also introduced democratic changes at the local level through processes of deliberation and greater democratic autonomy for village residents. This paper describes the mechanisms through which PB operated locally, and discusses how the process has differed from other instances of PB in China, as well as its innovations in international terms. Despite its successes, PB in Chengdu faces some challenges, namely its expansion from village to township level, the permanent need for support from the Communist Party at a high level, and insufficient research and evaluation.