Chinese uni scopes out democracy
Andrew Trounson September 03, 2008
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24287222-12332,00.html
IT is a far cry from the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement led by ill-fated university students, but it seems some Chinese universities are moving to introduce more direct democracy in their student unions.
Beijing's Tsinghua University is aiming to have its student union president directly elected by the student body by 2011, the year of its centenary. It would be only the second Chinese university to do so.
Accordingly, a group of Tsinghua student union officials were this week visiting Melbourne University's student union to learn about running elections.
Currently elections at Tsinghua are more indirect, with classes voting for class representatives who then vote for the student presidents of each of the 28 faculties. These presidents then vote for the overall student president.
But while Tsinghua university students appear keen to experiment with wider democracy on campus, they have no ambitions to change the national political system that is dominated by the politburo of the Communist Party.
``The system now is working fine and the people are happy with the system and all we want is stable and prosperous development,'' 21-year-old Tsinghua law student and student union vice-president Cao Feng told the HES.
Unfortunately the delegation will miss out on actually observing Melbourne's student union elections next week as they will be heading back to China.
In the wake of an end to compulsory student unionism here, student union members at Melbourne now amount to around 4700 out of a student body of 38,000. The organisation is in the process of transforming itself by necessity from being primarily a service provider to more of a political organisation.
Tsingua University http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/eng/
Andrew Trounson September 03, 2008
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24287222-12332,00.html
IT is a far cry from the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement led by ill-fated university students, but it seems some Chinese universities are moving to introduce more direct democracy in their student unions.
Beijing's Tsinghua University is aiming to have its student union president directly elected by the student body by 2011, the year of its centenary. It would be only the second Chinese university to do so.
Accordingly, a group of Tsinghua student union officials were this week visiting Melbourne University's student union to learn about running elections.
Currently elections at Tsinghua are more indirect, with classes voting for class representatives who then vote for the student presidents of each of the 28 faculties. These presidents then vote for the overall student president.
But while Tsinghua university students appear keen to experiment with wider democracy on campus, they have no ambitions to change the national political system that is dominated by the politburo of the Communist Party.
``The system now is working fine and the people are happy with the system and all we want is stable and prosperous development,'' 21-year-old Tsinghua law student and student union vice-president Cao Feng told the HES.
Unfortunately the delegation will miss out on actually observing Melbourne's student union elections next week as they will be heading back to China.
In the wake of an end to compulsory student unionism here, student union members at Melbourne now amount to around 4700 out of a student body of 38,000. The organisation is in the process of transforming itself by necessity from being primarily a service provider to more of a political organisation.
Tsingua University http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/eng/
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