As a member of the media I often work late into the night, meaning getting up and out for 8:00am can sometimes be a challenge. However, this week, one day was different – there was an election taking place for members of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress (similar, maybe, to council elections in London). I was curious how the process would go, so I skipped breakfast and went straight to the polling station to see for myself.
To be honest, my first impression of the voting venue was that it felt like a market. It was noisy, and even complete strangers were standing around chatting as they cast their votes.
Voting was held in the hall of the first floor, with about half a dozen civil servants checking everyone’s voting cards. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t listed as being pre-registered. This usually stops you from voting, but as I mentioned in a previous entry, I registered with two middle-aged ladies who came to my apartment.
I admit I got a little agitated when the civil servant explained the situation to me. But eventually, he told me not to worry and re-registered my details, before telling me to enter the voting hall.
The hall had three sections: one for registering, another for confirming voters’ identity, and the last one the actual voting section itself. Once inside, I pondered my choices. Who should I vote for?
An elderly woman handed me a purple voting slip. She pointed out the different candidates – one was a factory owner, one was a district head, and the other was an imam from a nearby mosque. She made some helpful “suggestions” on who I should vote for, specifically recommending those from the previous administration.
I decided to ask her some questions, including why I should vote for those elected in the previous election? She didn’t seem impressed, and asked why I had so many questions.
The comment gave me a jolt. Looking around, I realized that I was one of the younger voters here. I’d say 90 percent or more of the people in the hall looked at least 50 years-old. When I finished voting around 8:30am, there were around 30 to 40 people in the queue.
Incidentally, I didn’t listen to the woman in the voting hall. I voted for the imam.
When I got home, I wondered whether every polling station was like mine. Certainly I don’t doubt there’s plenty of enthusiasm elsewhere, just as there was at my local voting hall, where I saw people arriving in wheelchairs, despite the cool temperatures.
But having experienced the voting process first hand, there are clearly some issues that need to be addressed to ensure successful elections in the future. For a start, most polling stations are only open during regular working hours, and no holiday was called to make it easier for working people to vote. Also, no one really knows anything about the candidates. Aside from their names, ages, sex and occupations, I knew little about who I could vote for.
Unless you take the “suggestion” of the civil servants manning the polls, it seems there’s little for Chinese to go on.
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Mr. Mu Chunshan
Why are you and Jiang Xueqin such self-hating Chinese? How many voters in the Western world know much of anything, I mean anything, about their candidates? Have you ever taken part in an election in the States, Canada or Western Europe? Do you know the rate of voter turnout in the developed world? Do you know what a ‘majority mandate’ REALLY mean in the developed world? Let me give you some hints, a party in the West can win a ‘majority mandate’ by simply being voted in by less than one third (yes, less than 1/3) of the electorate. Do you know how the process and thus how the election math works? There is nothing wrong with criticizing China on many issues, but you and Jiang Xueqin’s attitudes, as reflected by your choice of words in the many articles written by you two, strongly show signs of two self-hating Chinese.
Do you know the common saying in Western communication that says: it’s not what you say that matters, but how you say it.
John Chan
Mr. Mu is brainwashed by the hype of western openness and fairness of election. Actually Mu’s suggested improvements are also applicable to the elections in the developed world too. Unless it is state and federal elections, usually people either do not vote or just vote whoever appears on the campaign postings most at municipal level and below.
Besides campaign promises are just promises in the developed world, those promises are not made under the oath. In the developed world people vote to punish and don’t vote for future most of the time; other than that people just vote for ideology, although most of those diehard ideological guys hardly know anything about ideology, all they know is that commie is bad and capitalism is good, although they got screwed by the capitalists majority of the time.
Finally I see mistakes made by voters and election officials in Beijing. Mu should do his homework on the candidates first before voting if he cares about election, otherwise he is in fault of disrespect election; soliciting input from election official is a tramp on his sacred citizenship rights. The election officials should not answer any question regarding candidates other than giving direction to vote.
BTW there is no day off on the election day in the developed world. Capitalist does not sacrifice bottom line for nobody.