China's opening to the outside world has reached its residential
areas this week when for the first time two foreigners were elected
neighborhood committee members in Shanghai metropolis, one of the
global financial and business hubs.
On
the afternoon of December 9, forty-nine delegates representing the
residents of the Yanlord Garden, a rising international community,
selected, from nine candidates, Jason Boonham, a bank executive
from Australia, and Lilian Loo, a Singaporean housewife with two
kids, as "officials" for their neighborhood committee.
Approximately 500,000 members nationwide of more than 115,000
neighborhood committees, which is a sort of grassroots
self-government management and service organization for urban
residents around China, have been affectionately referred by
Premier Zhu Rongji as "community premiers".
A
neighborhood committee usually ranges from several to a dozen
leading members recommended and selected by community residents
themselves to handle the day-to-day affairs of local residents:
from street security and family planning matters to helping local
residents, especially those laid-off workers find new jobs and
passing out government subsidies to those residents in want and
need.
At
times, the committee even helps mediate disputes among neighbors
and even resolve family disputes.
China's first neighborhood committee was also established in
Shanghai's Huangpu district right after new China was founded in
1949.
"I'm a bit worried, as I am not competent enough for the post, as
this is to 'serve the people'," the 32-year-old Boonham, a business
development manager with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said
in pure, standard Chinese with a Beijing accent and a sense of
humor.
Zhang Zhongfu, a residential delegate, said he voted for Boonham
because he is warm-hearted, straightforward and honest, and the
community indeed needs some foreigners to perform "self-government"
management as it has become quite internationalized.
Situated by the famed Huangpu River, the Yanlord Garden is probably
one of the most internationalized urban communities in China. More
than 40 percent of its 1,200-plus households have come from over 40
countries and regions worldwide. Boonham's neighbors include
Germans, Britons and Tanzanians, many of whom are business people
attracted and fascinated by this Oriental financial center's robust
economy and burgeoning market.
Founded in May, the Yanlord Garden neighborhood committee focuses
it attention on cultural exchanges between local Chinese residents
and foreigners, instead of security, public health and civil
administration that are, as a matter of fact, the priorities of
many other neighborhood communities across the country.
"The wider China opens itself to the outside world, the bigger and
greater the chance for foreigners to be elected 'community
premiers'," said Prof. Pu Xingzu, a noted prestigious sociologist
in community problems with the prestigious, Shanghai-based Fudan
University.
Quite a number of economically developed cities in China are
becoming increasingly internationalized, Pu said. Shanghai alone is
home to some 60,000 aliens from overseas who have lived in the
municipality for more than six months.
Foreign participation in community management is no longer a fuss
but a stark reality since a neighborhood committee is not a
governmental institution but an autonomous organ for the masses of
commoners, said Wang Xiaoling, an open-minded civil administrator
in Shanghai.
Electing a foreigner as a component member of a neighborhood
committee is not against any Chinese laws in effect or against
China's political regime, Wang added.
As
China opened up to the outside world over two decades ago, numerous
foreigners have become integrated and intermingled into Chinese
society, some of them are already acclimatized to local cultures
and daily lives in the areas where they live and work.
Though looked different with the Chinese in his countenance by
race, Boonham has become quite Chinese. He started to learn the
Chinese language in Sidney over a decade ago and, after coming to
China, he fell in love and married a Chinese girl and took her
surname of Yue. As for Lilian Loo, whose grandparents were the
overseas Chinese, so she had for long dreamed of returning to
reside in her ancestral native land.
Local residents at the Yanlord Garden, either Chinese or foreign,
have all placed their high hopes on their newly elected
neighborhood committee members.
"I'm the first foreign neighborhood committee member, but I am sure
I won't be the last," Boonham said with pride.
(People's Daily December 13, 2002)