Tina Huang

Dr. Liu
Comprehensive Chinese
1/23/16

There are some similarities between the peoples voting rights in China and in America.
In both countries, people have to be the age of 18 and registered in order to vote. Everyone that
meets the age requirement and status can vote regardless of race, occupation, ethnic status, sex,
education, familial background, property status, religious belief, or length of domestic residence.
There are some between the fundamental voting rights in China versus America as well. In
America, each person votes towards the electoral college which is represented by each individual
state. While in China, individuals vote for the National Peoples Congress (NPC) delegates that
will elect the president on their behalf, as representatives. Some other differences also include
the history of both countries acquirement of voting rights. Everyone in the US has had the right
to bare arms since 1791 but even to this date, there are people in China who do not have the right
to bare arms. Due to the Womens Suffrage, women were given the right the vote in the US in
1920, while women in China did not have the right to vote until more than 20 years later in 1949.
I am very surprised that although China is a country with over 5,000 years of history,
compared to America, with only about 300 years worth of history, America is more liberal and
has more civil rights. China is still a developing country although it is much older than America.
I think this shows how America is a country of liberty and freedom, which is an incentive for
many Chinese people to immigrate to the USA. Also, women began to have the right to vote
earlier than women in China and that might have affected how the countries have developed
now. Also, because the terms of the president are different, it can mark a lack of leadership
within the government and different alliances within the world. The requirement of the voting
age of 18 shows the unity between the understanding of when a person becomes an adult with a
fully developed brain and can make more logical and rational decisions. I think that there should
be more similarities between the voting rights in China and in America because this will create a
standard for how the world should run the same government and political system.
Sources:

The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China. (n.d.). Retrieved January 23,
2016, from http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/about/2007-11/20/content_1373251.htm
Hua, Y. (2014). Voting in China, a Distant Dream. Retrieved January 23, 2016, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/12/opinion/yu-hua-voting-in-china-a-distant-dream.html?_r=0
IX. The Election System. (n.d.). Retrieved January 23, 2016, from
http://www.china.org.cn/english/Political/26325.htm
Voting Rights. (n.d.). Retrieved January 23, 2016, from
http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/voting.html?
referrer=https://www.google.com/
Creating a Federal Right to Vote. (n.d.). Retrieved January 28, 2016, from
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2013/06/25/67895/creating-afederal-right-to-vote/