Chinese political history dating back to dynastic rule resembles notions of a highly centralized government, a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy, and the limited power of ordinary citizens to significantly change their circumstances, much minus the way they are governed. With the introduction in recent years of political reforms intended to strengthen local government by allowing the Chinese people to elect officials, scholars have paid more attention to the effectiveness of these local governments. In the readings I selected from Perry and Goldman (2007), this effectiveness of local governments at the village level relative to central government, as well as the extent to which long-standing bureaucratic and cultural norms are still present in the existing system, are both themes important in each of the articles. Looking specifically at local elections, substantial evidence points to ongoing corruption problems among elected officials and how this obviously undermines the legitimacy and effectiveness of local governance as democratic institutions. In Levy's (2007) analysis of village committee elections in Henan and Guangdong provinces, he examines recent developments in village self-government, the rise of economically based rural elites in the village power structure, the degree to which local governance and elections have been able to combat corruption versus vote buying, and how corruption and vote buying are linked to the growing importance of the new rural elite.1 Discussing recent developments in governance local, Levy (2007) addresses the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the competitiveness of village elections, the presence of women in government positions, corruption, and the......cultural revolution.... ..of middle paper and the Tiananmen Square movement which point to how the government attributed the unfortunate outcomes of those events to the “black hands” or “bad elements” of society, which led to unfortunate consequences for scapegoats . Thus, contemporary activists have many reasons to be wary of any negative labels imposed on them by the Chinese government. From just a handful of chapters on grassroots political reform in contemporary China, two themes have been made abundantly clear. First, elements of pre-communist China still pervade current Chinese society and continue to influence its politics and culture. Second, the problems of corruption and accountability found at all levels of Chinese government are particularly relevant when assessed at the village level. Taken together, these two points help elaborate the complexities of Chinese governance.