Believe me, this meeting will be fun: how participatory design enriched deliberative democracy in a Chinese village

How governance systems can invite and absorb Participatory Design (PD) within highly institutionalised and centralised contexts remains underexplored. This paper addresses this gap through a Research through Design (RtD) inquiry situated in rural China, exploring how PD can synergise with local Deliberative Democracy (DD) mechanisms. Working as an invited resource within the existing governance system, the team developed two interventions that operated within local DD practice: reconfigured PD–DD meetings using visual and material tools, and a low-cost PD–DD Wall situated in everyday village space. Follow-up tracking shows that participatory effects were largely sustained through routine administrative practices and resident initiative, rather than continued designer facilitation. The analysis identifies a three-stage translation process through which PD was gradually absorbed into local deliberative practice: language alignment, procedural adaptation, and infrastructure. It also demonstrates how situating participation infrastructures in lower places promotes everyday political discourse and collective action despite temporal and institutional constraints. Together, these findings broaden public-sector PD research by showing how participation can become meaningful and durable beyond one-time workshops in non-Western governance systems.