Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1993 01:49:18 -0500 Reply-To: TWP66@ISUVAX.BITNET Sender: China-Net From: Yungui Ding Subject: CCF (#9304) 9/22/93: "IFCSS: Today and Tomorrow (II)" To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT ==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Wednesday, September 22, 1993 (Issue No. 9304) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is a journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion and debate on the issues related to our community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Table of Contents Author | # of Lines ============================================================================ 1. Theme of the Issue: IFCSS: Today and Tomorrow (II) a. A History Making Conference (II) 3. Working Committees and Contracted Projects ...........Yungui Ding 121 b. Comments on IFCSS Budget Proposal ....................Zheng-Ping Chen 39 c. IFCSS President's Reply to Zheng-Ping Chen's Mail .....Changsheng Lin 46 d. Toward a Better Legislative Budgetary Oversight: A Response to "A History Making Conference (I)" .............Bai Yan 117 2. Community and Society: a. Chinese Publications Available Overseas ......................Jia Luo 13 b. Report of the FCSSC Survey on Beijing's Olympic Bidding ........FCSSC 36 3. Betwee Reader and Editor a. Reader's Comment on CCF (3 items) ....................................29 b. Reply of the CCF Editor Board ..................................EBCCF 35 ============================================================================ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== From The Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- We continue the discussion of "IFCSS: Today and Tomorrow" in this issue with the Part II of Ding Yungui's reflection of the IFCSS Council conference, Bai Yan's follow-up article on the subject of IFCSS budgeting, and two older messages from Chen Zheng-ping and Lin Changsheng. While various CSS organizations in the US have been silent on the issue of Olympic bidding, our country fellows in Canada seem to be more active. In this issue, we forward their survey result which may also reflect the feelings of CSS in the US. The dust will settle down tomorrow. No matter what happens, we still welcome readers to write to us on this and related subjects. At the third part of this issue, we answer some readers' questions about CCF, and we hope our readers will continue to support us to make CCF a better journal for our community. The following theme topics have been proposed for future issues: CSPA and its impact on CSS in the US and on China; IFCSS' internal structure and its functioning; Life in a foreign land; Sino-US relations (on and beyond YinHe incident); China's contemporary history (KMT and CCP; On Deng Rong's book); China's economic/market analysis; We hope more readers can write about these, and we will also appreciate it if you could suggest other topics. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1a. A History Making Conference (II) 3. Working Committees and Contracted Projects ...........Yungui Ding 121 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Covered Topics: 1. Budget Issues 2. Finance Regulations 3. Working Committees and Contracted Projects 4. Search for IFCSS' Future 3. Working Committees(WC) and Contracted Project(CP) In the President's personnel nomination package, we noticed that several key WC's established last year did not show up in the current WC list, such as the Humanitarian Assistance (HA) WC, the Science and Technology, Education, and Culture Exchange (STEC Ex)WC, and the Economic Exchange (E Ex) WC. We also noticed that half of the WC chair nominees are HQ staff members. From communications with the HQ, we got to know that the President was considering to eliminate those WC's not in the list. This touched off a hot debate in and out the Council's conference. The first question was: who has the authority to dissolve a WC and what is the proper procedure to do so? The second question was why should some WC be dissolved? The President obviously thought that WC's were a kind of sub-branches under the HQ and they automatically dissolved at the end of each term, So the President only needed to provide the nominations of the WC's he would like to have in this term. However, that is not what the Constitution says. According to the IFCSS Constitution, the WC's are a working mechanism of IFCSS, relatively independent of the HQ, although the chairmen are nominated by the President. WC's establishment and dissolution should be a result of either a resolution of the Congress or the Council or the President's proposal after the Council's approval. Therefore, the President cannot just ignore a WC he did not intend to keep and think it implicitly dissolved. For the HA WC, the President planned to eliminate the WC and put the work under the Human Rights (HR) WC. After many people pointed out that, because of the different nature and different profiles the two committees have, putting them together would definitely make more harm than good to the HA work, the President agreed to keep this committee unchanged. The President added a nomination in the second session of the conference, but it was decided by the Council as unnecessary. WC's and the chairmen should continue to be in place unless the President proposes otherwise, the Council's resolution states. There are two committees from last year left unexplained . One is the Economic ExWC which has not done real work in the past year and did not provide a work report to the 5th Congress. So things are easier to settle. The other one is the STEC ExWC. The Best Student Award and Student Organization Activity Fund programs were the work of this committee last year. A group of about 30 volunteers have worked for this WC and its project, and they are still willing to continue the work. In fact, the WC has been actively soliciting more programs in the exchange with China. According to the President's working plan, the same education exchange programs will be continuously supported by IFCSS this year. Then it seems to me that there is no reason that IFCSS should dissolve the WC and restart the whole thing in some other way. The Council also passed a resolution to require the HQ to explicitly propose to the Council if other WC's need dissolving. Questions were also raised about other ghost committees which once existed but were never properly dissolved. The HQ has sent a proposal to the Council after the first teleconference to deal with this problem. While WC system has been quite successful to carry out IFCSS' work, a new scheme has emerged. That is the Contracted Project (CP) system. In the initial years, volunteerism has been the driving force inside IFCSS, and many CSS' devotion to this organization has really contributed a lot to the success of it. However, we have gradually lost the enthusiasm from ordinary CSS towards this organization due to many reasons. The current relatively highly paid (compared with usual TA/RA-ship which most Chinese students are getting) and full-sized HQ does not seem to help encourage volunteerism. On the other hand, while IFCSS is more and more involved into business-like activities such as student service programs, a new mechanism is needed to conduct the work. The proposed CP system is such an idea in this direction and it might turn out to be a good one. In this teleconference, a resolution on the CP system was passed by the Council. It requires any IFCSS projects to be open for public bidding and any contract to be approved by the Council before the President can sign it. This resolution bears its significancy in at least two aspects. First, it may help push IFCSS' work to be more open to the public. Such as the NL case which I have introduced previously, while there is no guidelines to follow, it could be very messy a situation. Now with this resolution, we could put it in the right track. A public bidding of the NL project will not only build an open image of IFCSS, but will also encourage the participation of more people into IFCSS' work and more ideas to make it better. Secondly, this resolution sets up a guidance for the procedure of the CP system, which will certainly help put the IFCSS project management into a routine. In this year's budget proposal, there is an big item of $36,000 allocated to unspecified projects. Needless to say, for such a large amount that will go to various projects, if there were no regulations, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to hold the accountability. We are said to be making history in standing up to our responsibility when examining and voting down HQ's proposal, I would say, the establishment of a CP system for IFCSS' working mechanism would be more historical. It will open a new way besides the current WC system for IFCSS to conduct its business. After the Teleconference, many people praised/criticized this Council for taking an unprecedented action to vote down personnel and budget proposals by the HQ. Many of my colleagues in the Council said, we were just faithful to our duty. What we have done is really just we are supposed to. If we should be happier to see a rubber-stamp Council, what difference would be between dictatorship and democracy, be a ZhongYang (Center) or a ZongBu (HQ)? To make it more productive within the current IFCSS workframe, I would like to see the Council to take more initiative in the future. While voting down some proposals, I would like to see the Council to provide its own substitutes. Otherwise, the Council would always fall behind the HQ and at most could block something, but not create. I am afraid that that Council has a long way to go. As many people have pointed out, such a situation was partly because of a fact that although the Council bears significant responsibility which is no less than the HQ's, all Council members still work on volunteer basis. Let's put aside the fairness matter for now, this have largely reduced the sense of responsibility of the Council members. When confrontation occurs, when there is a need of courage as well as time and energy, when the Council needs its members to stand up, a volunteer can readily retreat to an easier position for him/herself: why do I bother? I am seriously thinking about a compensation scheme for the Council members (supposedly beginning next year). For example, if we reduce the HQ staff by one, we will have $24,000 with which we will be able to give $1,000 to each of the above mentioned persons. However nominal the amount is, it will put the Council into a different position. Both the Council members themselves and the public that elect them will have a much different perspectives, which will help build a stronger Council for the betterment of IFCSS. [, 9/20/93] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1b. Comments on IFCSS Budget Proposal ....................Zheng-Ping Chen 39 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) The vagueness and elusiveness of the categories. As some people have observed, what we have is a very crude, uninformative breakdown of revenue and expenditure. We get a lump sum of anticipated expenses, but we don't have a clue as to how they come up with the figure. Either they think we can be fooled or they don't want to trouble us with details, But we believe council members do need to know the specifics before they cast the vote. What in the world is "donation from society" in A.? And what on earth is "student service"? How is the income generated? What is the "round-table meeting" in (8) for? What will be the attendants? Does it refer to a fancy banquet or celebration? (2) The outrageous "operation cost" for the HQ. More than one-third of the estimated total revenue comes from donation (a generous sum, and let's hope that it is secured), yet it falls far short of the amount required to keep the office running. What if the donation is not guaranteed? As far as we know, the travel compensation for all the delegates to the 5th Congress was about $15,000, however the travel/transportation budget for HQ is to be $15,000. Do they all incline to travel first-class, assuming they can get discount (as they have always advised delegates to procure)? By the way, the travel expenses for HQ last term did not exceed $3,100. In B(2) the "miscellaneous" $5,000 is a very liberal allowance for HQ compared to the stingy sum of $200 for the 5-head supervisory committee on b(4). (3) The potential problem of the Headquarter being "over-staffed." We need to know the rationale behind the current setup of the HQ. For instance, why would such a small office need a "chief-of-staff" (quite an impressive title, I must admit)? What would he do that would entitle him to a full-time salary? Can the HQ learn austerity at the initial stage of an organization not born with a silver spoon in its mouth? It is not a matter of whether or not they should, but whether or not they can and will. We would all allow that it is always easier to criticize others than to do it ourselves. However a healthy organization needs to be exposed to dissenting voices in order to remind itself not to indulge in self- complacence, as if it does not have to answer to anyone. [From: 8/19/93; Abridged by: CCF] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1c. IFCSS President's Reply to Zheng-Ping Chen's Mail .....Changsheng Lin 46 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Zheng-Ping Chen: First of all, thank you for your concern of IFCSS. I hope that you will keep working and caring for IFCSS. If you have any good suggestions and constructive criticism, please let us know. The IFCSS budget proposal is based on last year's budget proposal. They are basically the same except for a few items. 1. "Donation from society": This fund does not come from the CSS students. It is from the Chinese Communities in U.S., Hong Kong and Taiwan. IFCSS has steadily received donation from these organizations since the establishment of IFCSS. 2. "Student Service": This refers to the revenue which IFCSS receive from the IFCSS Medical Insurance Program. Last year, the revenue from that alone was little over $70,000. As for this year, because more students are joining the program, we should have more revenue. 3. "Round-Table meeting": IFCSS have held the round-table meeting since the third term. Participants were IFCSS council members, the supervisory committee members, working committee chairs and the past presidents. They came to the meeting to discuss the direction of IFCSS, important tasks and the preparation of the annual congress. There was no fancy banquet for sure. 4. "Travel Compensation": First, the travel compensation for the 5th IFCSS congress was not $15,000, but more than $50,000. Second, one of the major task for the HQ is to work with the local CSS communities. The HQ plans to visit all eight region of the country this year. Third, the travel compensation also includes the expense for the up-coming Global Federation of Chinese Student Organizations (GFCSO). 5. "Miscellaneous": IFCSS HQ has the responsibility of serving the whole CSS community. This will involves a lot of unexpected activities that needs funding. So, this amount will surely be much greater than that of the council and supervisor committee. 6. IFCSS HQ has tremendous workload. HQ is not over staffed. In fact, it is under staffed. If you have time, you are welcome to visit the HQ. As for the job of chief of staff, it is to take care of the e-mail network, and everything else that keeps the office running. I hope the above will answer your questions about IFCSS budget proposal. Thank you again. Sincerely yours, Changsheng Lin, President, IFCSS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1d. Toward a Better Legislative Budgetary Oversight: A Response to "A History Making Conference (I)" .............Bai Yan 115 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A better tomorrow needs a better budgetary oversight as a part of the internal improvement not only within the Presidency (the executive body), but also the Council (the legislative body). Thanks to the article "The History Making Conference (Part I)," we were allowed to get a glimpse of the conflictual interactions between the two bodies, and a transformation the Council underwent from being passive and confirmatory to being assertive and challenging; from feeling guilty to say NO, to feeling duty-bound to cut budget. The present executive budget system as a common practice consigns equal responsibilities: the President prepares, submits budget proposal, and the Council deliberates, authorizes, and appropriates the final version. Indeed, after a spur of "history making" excitement, we've come to realize that the Council actually did something no more than what it was expected to do in the first place. In fact, just because of its first step of such a path-breaking nature, we all anticipate that the Council may have a relatively longer way to go before it becomes a fully-fledged legislative institution with fully exercised budgetary oversight. Yet, on the other hand, the imperative of the situation, in which the Presidency has become overly too strong, urges the Council to speed up its maturation so as to balance its relationship with the Presidency. The Council needs dynamic and aggressive spirit, the implications of which are twofold. First, budget should not be confined in the line-item control over the object-of-expenditures, albeit it is the initial stage one has to go through. Budget is made not solely for its consummatory value that the Council members simply add or subtract based on their intuitions. In a more complicated sense, budget is made for its instrumental value--planning the ways and means, the cost-benefit criteria for providing services. This implies an act of making choice. To make a choice, there must be an array of policy preferences, thereby option A is choosen as opposed to option B; allocation X is increased relative to alloction Y. With this in mind, budget cut is not the ultimate objective. A budget item is not compared with itself either, but with the optimal size of the budget for each alternative. As a precondition, budget makers shall know where to go before counting money. A conversation in Alice's Wonder Land illustrates this point. A traveler asked an old wise man which way to take. "It depends on where you want to go," replied the old man. "I don't know," said the traveler. "Then, it doesn't matter which way you will take." It really matters little if the Council saved much of money by cutting, but had no idea of where to use them. In this sense, the Council should set its own agenda with a range of policy preferences in an order of priority. The prioritized policies from both institutions are then compared and converted into a unified course of action. If there is no concensus on problem definition and policy priorities, there will never be agreement with budget appropriation. Budgeting will be a fruitless exercise when the two institutions assert and counter-assert in accordance with each other's egocentric criteria. Second, the Council members should overcome their tendencies of seeking excessive concurrence with the executive body in an urge for achieving unity. In the "groupthink" context, members in a decision-making group tend to self-censor themselves (such as shown in the article, members felt shy and guilty to say "no") in a strive for the illusion of unanimity. Nonetheless, unity is not equal to uniformity or conformity. The results of this type of concurrence seeking tendencies are devastating: distorted view of reality and a false sense of unity all at the expense of legislative responsibilities. The reason why the executive bocy is strong is because it takes initiatives. Whereas why the legislative body is weak, it is because it never envisions itself of playing a leading role. This article should end here by now, but it cannot be complete without discussing a little bit accounting and auditing. Since the accounts receivables/payables were mentioned in the article, I assume that the IFCSS's accounting is on the accrual basis, meaning that revenues and expenses are recognized when earned and incurred, regardless of the time of related cash flow. Accounts receivables (shortened as A/R) are the claims of the IFCSS against others or future revenues; account payables (A/P) are the liabilities of future payments. But, I don't understand why the Council especially wanted to "put the A/R under the direct supervision." Is it because of a low receivable turnove ratio caused by ineffective collection efforts, or by imprudent credit granting? To me, A/P is as important as A/R. A/P tells how much the IFCSS owes and how much is already obligated, therefore we are in a better position to figure out how much cash has to be paid out plus interest and whether the estimated surplus for the FY 1993-94 is net or not. Internal auditing system (IAS) is certainly a good idea, but it has to be pointed out that IAS is inconceivable without accounting reporting system (ARS). ARS must exist as a basis for IAS to work on. As the last phase of annual budget and accounting cycle, all accounts of funds are compiled into what is called CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports), which is designed to inform the legislative body, donor, investors, and the general public about the executive compliance with budget. The auditor's job is to make sure if the financial statements in the CAFR conforms with the GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The executive body has the duty to prepare the financial statements such as the state of income, balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows first as prerequisites for auditing. Budget format is also problematic. The observed budget is not arranged under consistent classifications, and that's why it occasionally caused confusion. If it is decided to go by the object-of-expenditures, then such items as Supplies, Salaries, Rent ... should serve as headings; if it goes by projects/programs, then Newsletters, Student Services, Exchange Affairs, etc., should appear as headings. In view of the foregoing, it would be much better that the Council mandate an establishment of a professional accounting reporting system (CAFR) and an unified format of budget, if they are not available. Finally, a few straightforward questions are posed for the Council, as we are still not provided with as much as we need to obtain a peace of mind. 1) With 60% of the estimated revenues coming from donations and foundations, who are those donors and investors? What for? 2) 40% of the estimated revenues is from student service foundation, what does the student service mean? 3) How many people are on the payroll, full time and part time? What are their job descriptions? 4) Will the IFCSS publicize the revised budget with disclosures? Doing budgetary oversight is no easy chore, it demands a lot of giveaways from the Council members, including time, energy, knowledge ... Your services will definitely be a blessing for the IFCSS. [From: 9/19/93] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 2a. Chinese Publications Available Overseas ......................Jia Luo 13 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To meet the cultural and children's educational needs of oversea Chinese students and scholars, Pacific Rainbow Co.(PRC) provides a new service which makes Chinese books, magazines and newspapers available by ordering from overseas. The service covers more than 300 books and magazines, including 60 children' readings, from the most recent and popular publications in mainland China. Ordered items are directly shipped to reader's address from China via sea or air. Readers' special interests and needs are considered and served. Interested readers may contact Jia Luo, the President of Pacific Rainbow Co., for more information at: 513 Hawkeye Court., Iowa City, IA 52242. Tel. 319-353-4624. Email: jialuo@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu. Please include a regular mailing address when request free catalog. [From: , 09/18/93] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2b. Report of the FCSSC Survey on Beijing's Olympic Bidding ........FCSSC 36 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Editor's note: For the original questionair, please see CCF No. 9302, September 8, 1993.] During Sept. 3 to Sept. 9, the Theoretic Research Committee of the FCSSC made a survey via the CND on the matter of Beijing's bid for the 2000 Olympic Games among Chinese students and scholars in Canada. 124 people responded to this survey. The following statistics is the final result based on our "fcssc-survey@sfu.ca" record: 1) Yes side: 98 (78.4% in terms of percentage) strongly support: 70 (56%) support: 23 (22.4%) reasons for Yes side: a: 57 b: 51 c: 65 d: 4 e: 42 f: 10 2) No side: 26 (20.8%) strongly against: 16 (12.8%) against: 10 (8%) reasons for No side: a: 16 b: 16 c: 14 d: 6 e: 11 f: 4 3) Don't care: 1 (0.8%) The statistics shows that most of Chinese students and scholars who replied to the survey strongly support or support Beijing's bid for the 2000 Olympic Games. Among the people to response this survey, more than one half of them (56%) strongly support Beijing's bid for the Olympics. The main reason to support is the No.c reason, i.e. Olympic Games will promote China's political and economic development. Only a few people support based on the No.c reason, i.e. China will retrieve the negative influence cased by 6.4. Some of people in the Yes side provide their own reasons to support Beijing's bid, such as: Olympic Games will promote China's open-door policy and China's human rights condition; China will get financial income through Olympic Games. As for people in the No side, there are still 20.8% people against Beijing's bid. Among the No side people, they are against mainly due to No.a and No. b reasons, i.e. China will spend its huge financial budge and Chinese government plays political game via Olympics. [Source: FCSSC News Release; From: 0/17/93] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 3a. Reader's Comment on CCF (3 items) ....................................29 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Editor, Thank you very much for devoting your time and efforts to create another discussion forum for the CCS. There is a question, however, concerning the objectives of CCF. After reading the so far published issues of CCF on China-net, people might wonder if this is an "real" open Chinese Community forum, or it is just another IFCSS forum, an IFCSS Newsletter, in other word. I don't mind if it is an IFCSS forum (because I am a supporter of it), but please don't name it as CCF. Thank you. [From: 9/17/93] ___ ___ ___ Dear Editor, Many items in this issue have been the published material, such as the discussion in SF on Olympic 2000, and the release of Wei Jingsheng. I'd suggest CCF to enclose materials from people who are commenting on the issues rather than simply forwarding it, and make another junk mail. Thank you. [From: 9/17/93] ___ ___ ___ Dear Editor: Recently I have found that almost all the articles of CCF come from earlier issues of CND, and some of the articles are the exact artices of one, even two week old issues of CND. So if the source of CCF only comes from CND, please tell us, the readers, so that some of us who already subscribe CND may un-subcribe CCF and do not have to waste time to read the same stuff twice. Final questions: what is/are your purpose(s) to set up CCF? What is/are the difference(s) between CCF and CND, if any difference exits? Thanks. -- A reader. [From: 9/20/93] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3b. Reply of the CCF Editor Board ..................................EBCCF 35 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear friends, Thank you for your message. CCF is a new journal dedicated to the exchange of infomation/ideas and discussion/debate of affairs in the community, and it needs the input from the community to improve its quality. We would appreciate your further comments on the selection of the theme topics and the contents, as well as your contribution of articles. In addition, we would like to offer some explanations specifically in response to several of your comments. The theme of CCF, September 15, 1993 is on IFCSS. As explained in the editorial of this issue, we believe the discussion on IFCSS, including its internal operations, is relevant to the Chinese community at large. However, CCF is not limited in its scope only to IFCSS-related activities. In fact, we are actively soliciting contributions from other community organizations and activists. We plan to initiate discussions on many other aspects of our community development in later issues of CCF. The several articles you have pointed out have indeed been posted on various nets, though not necessarily on China-Net. In view of their relevance to the theme of the last issue of CCF, we have included them so as to provide a continuation on the focus, especially for those readers who do not pick up everything on China-Net but only read through the "digested" packages such as CCF. We regret that this has caused some waste of resources for more devoted net readers like you. We hope that, with the support of CNMC and the net community, China-Net will pass its transition period after the recent reform, and less redundancy will be achieved together with the maximization of the information/noise ratio. As a group of volunteers, CCF Editor Board needs more people concerned about the community to join in the force, to contribute articles and messages, to criticize and comment, so that CCF could facilitate and focus the exchange of ideas more effectively and efficiently. [From: Editor Board of CCF, , 9/20/93] +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Yungui Ding Executive Moderator: Weihe Guan + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to cnd.org[132.249.229.100]:pub/community/CCF + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to net-cord@lab.ultra.nyu.edu + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++