From @UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU:owner-china-nt@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Wed Jan 19 18:53:13 1994 Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 15:37:55 -0500 Reply-To: yaxin wang Sender: China-Net From: yaxin wang Subject: CCF #9402: IFCSS Activity, 1/19/94 Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu 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, January 19, 1994 (Issue No. 9402) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is a journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion and debate on the issues related to the Chinese 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 ============================================================================ Theme of the issue: IFCSS Activity 1. On the Secrecy of IFCSS Operation -- A Letter to the IFCSS Council Members...................Cheng Liu 110 2. Finance Matter and Professionalization of the IFCSS........Lai Anzhi 155 ============================================================================ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== From The Editor +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Since the Financial Committee of IFCSS Council released an open letter to the IFCSS Council and the community of Chinese Students and Scholars (CSS) on January 8,1994, the situation of financial management of IFCSS HQ has been concerned by the whole community of CSS. In this issue of CCF we bring you some responses regarding the fundamental issues behind the current debate. Since CND-US released an exclusive report on the IFCSS financial management (CND-US 1/17/94), interested readers may obtain relevant information through ftp to CND.ORG under sub-directory /pub/cnd-us. Relevant background information also can be obtained from previous publications of CCF #9320 (11/23/93) and CCF #9325 (12/8/93). CCF is planning to follow up the development and welcomes more comments and contributions from our readers. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. On the Secrecy of IFCSS Operation -- A Letter to the IFCSS Council Members...................Cheng Liu 110 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Dear fellow council members: We are now at a critical moment of our term as the 5th IFCSS council member. It will also be a critical moment of IFCSS history. We hope this will be an important moment to be remembered in our pursuit of democracy, as we begin to truly understand the word democracy and to apply it to our daily practice. I think everybody must still remember at the 5th IFCSS congress, people were thinking, debating. People were all asking the same question what will be the fate of IFCSS after CSPA? We were all worried about the future of this community of Chinese students and scholars. We were all confused about how IFCSS going to play its role in the future of this ever larger and more diversified community. But one thing was crystal clear in the mind of every single one of us, that is we need a CHANGE. We were elected for this term of change. we are mandated by the fellow students and scholars that voted for us to bring change to IFCSS, to its cause, to its structure, and most importantly to the way it is operated. Lets ask ourselves what changes we have brought after half of term has passed? I remember one conversation I had with Dr. Cheng Ming, an IFCSS veteran from the very beginning. He said the IFCSS was founded at the tragic incidence of June 4th, under the anger against the undemocratic way that the Chinese government was governing the country, we were disgusted by the killing of the students simply because they were concerned, they wanted to know, they wanted to be involved. But it is only now, after four years, we just begin to understand the true meaning of Democracy. What is it? What is the meaning of this magic word? The word that everybody in this world all claim that he is for it. Webster's dictionary defines it as following "Democracy, govern by people or their representatives". aha! We are claiming we are democratic, in fact this is the most important cause that brought us together. Have we lived up to the spirit of democracy? Are we open to the people that we are representing? Are the ones that we voted open to us? If people are not informed how they can govern? In our case, if the entire students and scholars community is not well informed how their opinions can be reflected in the policy of IFCSS and how the operation of the IFCSS can be towards their needs and demands? We are trying to bring some changes to IFCSS. For the past several months, the financial reform task force have been trying extremely hard to change the budgeting and accounting system of IFCSS which allowed many financial disasters, like Zhao Haiqing's incidence, to happen so many times in the short 4 years history of IFCSS. It is overwhelmingly considered a necessary thing to do among the students and scholars' community. It is also a consensus among us that we must straight this mess out. But why we have been experiencing such a resistance if we are acting according to the people we represent. Who is fighting so fiercely against bringing this change to our organization using every means they can possibly use. After all these frustrations, the financial committee decided to take the case to the public. To released a letter to the community that compiles all the questions that were asked during the second teleconference, the questions that are not answered by our executive branch. This letter induced a series debates among the CSS community. The debate among us in the council is not really on the financial reform, of which we all agree, we all know changes should be made. The debate among us is about whether we should let people, the people that we are representing, KNOW! about the SECRECY OF IFCSS OPERATION! It is on this issue our opinion diverged. Should we let them know? or should we not? To the ones that still remembers the definition of democracy, the question is self- explanatory. Not only there is nothing wrong with letting people know, on the contrary this is what we should do and have to do. THIS IS A MATTER ABOUT OPENNESS AND SECRECY! THIS IS A MATTER ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE! Secrecy of the IFCSS operation is the biggest single enemy that will jeopardize the future of IFCSS as a democratic organization. During the 5th congress, all the representatives voted for the expansion of exchange between oversea students and people in China. We all know this is a big inevitable in the new era after CSPA and during China's economical reform. But we also know this is a very complicated issue. Political situation has not been changed in any great extend in China. We decided to pursuit exchange, because we understand that China need to catch the wave of economical development, we believe the economical reform will bring about deeper and more profound changes in China. Now, we glad the HQ had made first step. But at the same time, given the importance and sensitivity of this undertaking, we are terribly dispointed that council was not informed before this was happened. No plan had been worked out between the council and HQ on how IFCSS going to stand on issues, like MFN and how the exchange going to be carried out, that can represent the interests of the whole community. Instead of doing it prepared and intelligently, we did that in a unprepared, unintelligent, unprofessional fashion. Most importantly it was done in a undemocratic way. What is wrong? why all these are happening? That is because the SECRECY in our operation. The HQ is trying to keep the council in dark and our council is trying to keep the public in dark. Every body is working in the back of others, and for God's sake, under the name of protecting IFCSS. We all know a healthy body is a body that metablize, a body that knows what to absorb and what to discharge. A brain can not be alive without the rest of the body parts. A organization can not be well and healthy without all the components work together, without every part of it being informed and in cooperation. Let's remember from the by-law that IFCSS is a organization that represents the entire community of students and scholars, our cause is to promote democracy. So, the students and scholars are within the IFCSS, and they are the IFCSS, they are the ones should be informed and they are the ones who should govern. Dear members of the council, we are here because we wanted to do good things for our people. As we always say, good motivation isn't enough. Lets give up the old ways of thinking that already become the warm bed for the secrecy in operation. We need to dislose when there is a problem, we need to confront when it is a matter of principle. Thank you. (Posted on the IFCSS Council net on Jan. 13, 1994; CCF received on Jan. 15, 1994.) [Editor's Note: Cheng Liu is a current council member.] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 2. Finance Matter and Professionalization of the IFCSS........Lai Anzhi 155 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ As severe winter storms are attacking the soil of the United States relentlessly, a big storm in the IFCSS community is roaring around. It is centered at the financial management of the IFCSS. On January 8, 1994, the Finance Committee of the IFCSS Council released an open letter, bringing a seemingly very serious financial problem to the attention of the general public. According to the letter, a very likely missing fund up to $230,000 of the 4th term IFCSS has been detected. This letter triggered probably the biggest controversy in the IFCSS community. Some people called it a "$0.23 million scandal", some swore "will never donate a penny to the IFCSS". Even those who have been holding strong faith in the IFCSS started asking questions such as "were you guys really breaking the most sensitive taboo in the world for running an organization?". In this article, I shall avoid getting into the details around this controversy because I have probably talked about it too much (in detail too), and because I am probably known as a "pro-IFCSS HQ" person, which is the side that was put on a defensive position. However, I would like to share my personal point of view on the subject of professionalization of the IFCSS with the readers of the CCF. As far as I can remember, professionalization, as an overall strategy of upgrading the IFCSS, was put forward by Ge Xun, who was the third term IFCSS Council's chairperson and who, together with the whole 3rd term council, made tremendous effort in this regard. This idea immediately gained overwhelming support from the general public. However, the pace of professionalization of the IFCSS is still not fast enough, although the successive terms of the IFCSS, especially the 4th term Council, continued the cause. This ongoing controversy demonstrated the seriousness of the problem. First, the IFCSS HQ's operation should be further professionalized. The IFCSS HQ is managing the daily business of the IFCSS. Having worked in the IFCSS, I know the degree of burden of the IFCSS work. One serious problem of the IFCSS HQ (all terms) operation that I can see is that it has not paid significant attention to the public relation, which is probably one of the most important aspect of any organization if it really wants to be professionalized and growing. It is inevitable that the general public will have more complaints than compliments towards the leadership of their own organization. It seems to me that the IFCSS HQ very often is not sensitive enough to the public complaints. As a matter of fact, most of these complaints are from not being well informed or misunderstanding. Probably because of the busy routine work of the IFCSS, the HQ rarely respondeded to the public complaints. It is true that the IFCSS President/VP can not engage themselves in large scale public debates unless absolutely necessary (such as Gore vs Perot, as an example), but, it seems to me that the HQ should at least have a person similar to the "White House Press Secretary", who should be representing the HQ, and responding to the public promptly on all key issues. If this was pursued, then many unnecessary controversies could be avoided or prevented from developing into "live or death" crisis. The more serious problem of professionalization is reflected in the Council's Finance Committee. I have no doubt that the committee's inspection effort was aimed at professionalization of the IFCSS; however, as far as I can see, it adopted highly unprofessionalized approach and mentality to conduct a presumably professionalized business when it has some doubts in the IFCSS financial management. Let's take an overall look at this issue. To be professionalized, it appears to me that the Finance Committee of the Council should first have a basic sense of order of magnitude of the IFCSS financial status. If I were in charge of the committee, which should be as professionalized as possible for such a crucial duty in the IFCSS, I would first ask myself some questions and try to answer them (or do some basic studies) before I took any action. For examples: * How big is the IFCSS business in terms of revenue? * How big is the IFCSS expenditure under normal circumstances? * As an organization (company, if one will), what kind of costs ordinary companies/organizations must have? * What kinds of special costs does the IFCSS have differently from other ordinary business? * What are the orders of magnitude of these itemized costs? Common sense tells us that each and every ordinary company must have the following expenses at least: * Staff salaries and benefits * Office rent (or loan) * Office equipment and supplies * Office operation costs (phone/fax, mails, documents printing and distribution, etc) * Project (production) costs * Conferences/meetings costs * Business travel costs * Costs of working branches (committees in the case of the IFCSS) * Advertisement and PR costs * Possible debts (or loan) * Banking and accounting costs * Taxes * maybe some other costs Also, each organization (company) has its own special expenses different from the others. For the IFCSS, it has at least: * Congress (Convention) costs * Newsletter costs * CSPA costs (for the 4th term) * Fund to local schools * 6.4 victim support * Council and SVC costs * Internship costs * maybe some other costs All these costs can be estimated using the most conservative method (or even obtain rather accurate numbers from publicized figures) without even going to any where. Then the committee should have a pretty good idea what kind of order of magnitude of the problem could be, which would enable the committee to prepare itself for subsequent actions. It is probably well known to the IFCSS activists (of course including the Council Finance Committee members) that the IFCSS is a business of no more than $500,000 (except for the first term). Very conservative estimate of those costs would make the committee realize that a $230,000 (or $140,000) scandal is simply impossible, for that the IFCSS is, at least seemingly, functioning normally. I guess that the mistake of the Finance Committee lies in this lack of sense of order of magnitude, which is essential for any professionalized work, otherwise, it should never have implied such a scandal (30-50% of the total revenue of the IFCSS!). Working in the IFCSS for sometime, I conservatively estimated the costs of the 4th term IFCSS by counting only those must-be-there items, it was in the order of $350,000 to $400,000 (with a known balance from the 4th term of about $70,000 revealed by the committee). I submitted an article to CND-US about this. If CND-US carries that article, I hope the readers of the CCF, if they also read the article, could make a judgement on my estimation to see how much it was biased. On the other hand and very generally, a business in the United States will have very very hard time to survive even if only 10% of its revenue is illegally/unexpectedly taken away. (Please note that a lot of business, such as McDonalds, make net profit only in the order of a few percent). About two months ago, I talked to a CEO of a medium size company with about 80 employees. He said that even a 5% scandal in his company would kill it, needless to say a 30-50% one as indicated by the committee. To me, this is really too much of an unprofessionalized piece of work. The unprofessionalization of the committee is also reflected in its way of handling the problem. Even if a 30-50% scandal is possible, the committee did not try to solve the problem through professionalized channel first, which in the case of the IFCSS is to appeal to the IFCSS SVC. Maybe the mentality of the committee was that by approaching the public directly would make its work easier. It could be true if one presents to the public professionalized and believable work, which, unfortunately was not the case. The controversy caused by this letter is still there, which means that any definitive conclusion would be premature at the moment; but I sincerely hope that we all learn some lessons from this still ongoing controversy, especially those who have great responsibilities in the IFCSS -- our own organization. Professionalization is a process of learning. Let's all pay highly sufficient attention to this, which is probably the most efficient way to make a better IFCSS, of course, provided that we all want to see a growing and healthy IFCSS, which I assume and certainly hope is the case. (Received on Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994, from LAI@CEBAF.GOV) [Editor's note: Lai Anzhi was the chair of IFCSS Council in the 1990-91 term.] +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Yaxin Wang 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 ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++