On February 26, 2017, the 2017 NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Competition (Asia Site), hosted by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA), came to a successful end at Tsinghua University. The competition attracted graduates from many well-known Asian schools and institutes of public administration, including Korea Development Institute, Peking University, Tsinghua University, University of the Philipines, Renmin University of China, Jinan University, Fudan University, University of International Business and Economics and so on. The competition language was English, and participants analyzed and discussed “Food Safety Issues” which was the topic of the competition. Our university sent 5 students altogether to the competition. After nine hours of fierce competition, the world1 team that Lin Gong and Qi Liu — the 2016 graduates of School of Public Administration who represented our university — was in, successfully broke out of an encirclement with a total score of 69.66 and won the championship. This is also the first time that graduate students of School of Public Administration of our university have won an award in an international competition and won honors for our university and our school.
At 8:30 in the morning, the contest kicked off. Prof. Xufeng Zhu, a professor and doctoral tutor of Tsinghua University, made the opening speech of the contest. He introduced the guest judges and expressed his warm welcome to the arrival of the college teams. Subsequently, participants from various Asian universities teamed up. The participants chose among the five major regions of the world (South America, East Africa, West Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia), and determined the region each team would represent. Then they decided the simulated roles of government sectors team members were to play, and performed computer operations on data using the official policy simulation tool. In the case of a limited budget, participants made calculations and analysis based on the safety indicators of various countries and regions provided by the simulator and the predicted effects of various food safety policies. Participants gave their teams’ solutions within the allotted time in each round, which were periodically marked by the judges. After four rounds of simulated discussion, the contest entered the presentation and questioning session. After the representative teams displayed their results, they had to give explanations and answer the questions asked by the judges. The competition took all day long — it is a multiple test of the participants' intelligence, mentality and physical strength.
The competition got a lot of support from leaders and teachers of School of Public Administration. Prof. Libo Fan took care of the preparatory work in person and paid close attention to this contest. He gave detailed guidance and assistance in many aspects. Libo Fan specially invited teachers from relevant specialties in School of Statistics and China Institute for WTO Studies, UIBE to explain to students and demonstrate operation procedures for the software video to be used in the competition and model index construction. Before the contest, two teachers from our school, Chen Xu and Qing Wang, carried out detailed guidance on several perspectives including literature collection and analysis, basic knowledge of public policies, simulation of roles in the contest, policy proposals and analysis, simulation of presentations and analysis of handbooks. In preparation for the competition and during the competition, tutors in School of Public Administration guided the team all the way and provided maximum support and assistance for the teammates in terms of knowledge reserve, agenda guidance, scheduling, accommodation arrangements and so on.
NASPAA has become a global alliance of public administration institutions and the most authoritative certification organization in the field of international public administration education. In 2017, NASPAA set up a competition area in Asia for the first time, and it was undertaken by Tsinghua University which had already been certified. By participating in this international competition in public administration, we have fully demonstrated the comprehensive qualities of postgraduate students in School of Public Administration, including solid professional knowledge, good command of English, excellent operation skills and agile resilience, making great contributions to the process of fully promoting international certification of schools of public administration and the first-class discipline construction of public administration.
