According to Zhang Liyong, Xianyang is the “best place in the world.” He said this while attending the First Session of the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC) which began in Beijing on March 5.

Last December, Zhang was elected mayor of Xianyang, a historical city north west of Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province. Ten years ago he was transferred from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to Qindu District, Xianyang City to serve as secretary of the district’s Party committee.

He is one of the local mayors in the country’s 313 cities at prefectural level, of which elections finished prior to the First Session of the 10th NPC. Presently most of these mayors are in Beijing attending the annual NPC session.

In contrast to their predecessors, most of the mayors were publicly announced before being formally nominated as candidates for the posts after a lengthy period of inspection.

Liu Huiyan, mayor of Zibo in Shandong, was an experimental subject under another cadre nomination system reform. Last summer, newly re-elected leaders of the province made a decision that any newly-nominated candidates for local government, or its departments directly under the province, would be decided by votes taken by members of provincial Party committee instead of by direct appointment. Liu was elected in such a manner. This truly is reform.

The new mayors carried the weight of the election process for the very first time.

Luo Bisheng, mayor of Yueyang City, Hunan Province, was not re-elected in the single-candidate election for local governor earlier this year. He was the first to taste this kind of failure but was luckier the second time round.

New mayors are generally thought to be young and educated. Most of them being less than 50 have college degrees and some higher degrees also.

Twenty years ago, the young and educated cadres, or Party members, went straight from the grass roots to important posts within the Party or in government organizations, in light of a then new cadre appointment system that gave preference to the young, educated and revolutionary. But aged cadres with poor education were promoted again at a later stage.

Many years ago a young employee with a provincial government said, “I want to continue to study for a master’s degree once I graduate but many of my colleagues persuaded me otherwise. They said I would be an ‘intellectual,’ and of course, ‘intellectual’ is not a good thing to be.”

Resistance to reform can be imagined in this way. Some educational achievements were devalued then and cadres with poor education received valid work experience but later also degrees that may now have less than due credibility. Today, reform stipulates that the only valid qualification is that received through regular education. Some local cadres are less than happy.

With further huge resistance to this reform, new local cadre elections were completed in time of the First Session of the 10th NPC. And in contrast to the elections almost 20 years ago, the new reform has not been done in the glare of publicity either at the start of its conclusion.

What the ordinary person saw on their TV or in their newspapers this time round were publicity shots and brief introductions. No fanfare but quiet.

(China.org.cn by Liu Yuming, March 17, 2003)