The nondescript three-sided wooden objects look like bookshelves in a carpenter’s workshop, but in China, they have become symbols of democracy. Bloggers have tartly commented on the contrast between the unusually high privacy afforded by these wooden voting booths and the lack of such measures to ensure secret ballots in other Chinese elections.

“This is a picture that will be recorded in history,” wrote one blogger in a comment about the voting booths that went viral after last week’s vote for a Wukan election committee . “These farmers with little education have paid attention to the details of democracy. The theory that Chinese people are not suitable for democracy is wrong.”

For decades, Chinese leaders and academics have argued that China was not suited to democracy and that it would slow down its economic development. In his memoirs, Zhao Ziyang, the late former premier, recounts that ex-leader Deng Xiaoping once said that having a western-style democracy with a legislature, judiciary and executive would be “too complicated” for China.