The year 2006 is called an “election year” in mainland China. County and village level representatives of the People’s Congress will change terms, and new representatives will supposedly be elected directly by voters. Following that, Communist Party committees at provincial, city, county and township levels will have their term change. These changes will affect more than 900 million voters, who are all waiting to see what happens. Sun Buer, a young man in Wuhan, is campaigning as a candidate for representative of the People’s Congress in Jiang'an district of Wuhan city. He entered the race as a candidate independent of the Chinese Communist Party, while himself a leader of the local Pan Blue Coalition [1]. To let people know about his campaign ideas, he has made 300 T-shirts and distributed to voters.
Regarding his candidacy, Sun Buer said that people often told him they never know who their local representatives in the People’s Congress are, and that they hope a person who can truly speak for them can be elected this time. Sun believes that there have been many problems in the elections of both the People’s Congress and Party committees, since the voting rights of many people have been ignored and trampled upon. For example, the process of generating candidates has been too constrained, and candidates are often decided internally or appointed. Candidates and voters do not have the opportunity to meet and communicate face to face. The voting procedures are without regulations and guidelines, and vote tally and vote recount have often been done behind close doors. Some places and offices even manipulate the entire voting process, turning what is supposed to be a democratic election into an illegal means to achieve personal gains. These problems have severely damaged fairness and competitiveness of elections.
Sun Buer said he likes to use T-shirts to advocate his ideals. T-shirts are popular and the method is inexpensive and practical. Using T-shirts he can express his opinions in a relatively easy and simple manner. He saw that during elections in Taiwan, many voters wore election T-shirts advocating candidates or parties they support, and the effect is pretty good. He hopes to follow the Taiwan experience.
Sun Buer indicated that his main ideas as an election candidate have been expressed on these T-shirts. This makes it easy for voters to understand him and for him to communicate with voters. He gave out election T-shirts to his loyal supporters, who are happy to accept them. In doing so, Sun hopes to encourage people’s democratic consciousness and their desire to participate; he wants people to be more aware of their own rights.
