Loving thy neighbor's committee

German businessman Carlos Candeias has just been reelected to the neighborhood committee of the residential compound where he lives in Shanghai. He joins two other foreign residents in a pilot scheme that hopes to open up neighborhood committees across the city to expats.

It's quite an occasion in a city where there are 3,552 neighborhood committees and 1,639 village committees in suburban areas. Shanghai is home to some 210,000 foreigners but hardly any of them know anything about these committees, what they do and how they work.

Candeias is joining two other foreigners on the committee at Yanlord Gardens, a residential compound in Pudong. Rosangela Muller from Brazil and Wei Hongxia from Australia were also elected to the neighborhood committee earlier this month.

Shanghai's neighborhood and village committees held their triennial elections this year but Yanlord Gardens is the only committee where foreigners have been elected.

In China neighborhood committees function to serve and manage the community, liaising between the residents and the government and taking residents' opinions and requests to the authorities. Residents elect the committee members every three years.

In practice the neighborhood committee in most residential compounds in China has multiple roles including overseeing the security of the neighborhood, promoting government policies, resolving disputes among neighbors and organizing activities for the residents.

Unlike the property management companies which are responsible for the day-to-day operating details of the neighborhood and owners' committees which oversee the property management company's work and real estate maintenance funding, neighborhood committees are closely involved with residents.　　

The original idea

Yanlord Gardens is the very first community in China approved by the Ministry of Civil Affairs for this pilot scheme. It began inviting foreigners who lived in the compound to participate in neighborhood committee elections in 2002. This year it had its fourth election and so far it is the only community in Shanghai allowing foreigners to take part in elections.

Yanlord Gardens is found in Lujiazui and could almost be a mini United Nations. Of the 5,000 residents there 40 percent are from 50-plus foreign countries, 20 percent come from Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan. Residents who were born on the mainland account for less than 20 percent of the community.

The director of the neighborhood committee at Yanlord Gardens, Zhang Wenxia, said that the idea of having foreigners on the committee was inspired by an incident more than a decade ago.

One day one of the foreigners living there was frightened by a neighbor's dog and both began arguing about this. Neither the property management staff or the neighborhood committee members could bring about peace. But a passing foreigner saw the pair arguing and paused to talk to them both, solving the disagreement with just a few well-chosen words of advice which saw the neighbors settling down and ending their battle.

"This really impressed us and made us wonder how he could resolve this dispute so quickly when we had been struggling. We found foreigners could communicate more easily with other foreigners than we could. Sometimes one word from them is better than 10 sentences from us," Zhang said. In 2003 two foreigners were among the seven new neighborhood committee members elected.

Neighborhood committee members don't get paid and don't have specific daily duties to perform. But they have to attend regular meetings with the committee and with the property management company, the property owner's committee and local police to discuss community issues.

"We hope that with their help, we can better understand and communicate with the foreign residents here," Zhang said. She agreed that it was very difficult to get to know foreigners by traditional methods.

"On one hand, we have to respect their privacy, and on the other hand we have to communicate with them," Zhang said. "Our biggest challenge is attracting more foreigners to join in events organized by the committee. Chinese residents are still in the majority at most of our events. But now we are thinking about what really might interest our foreign residents and trying to get to know them better."

A fluent first

Carlos Candeias is the first foreigner elected to a neighborhood committee twice. He was among the very first residents in Yanlord Gardens in 2000. His father was Spanish and his mother was Portuguese and Candeias can speak several languages fluently. He married his wife, a Shanghai girl, in Hamburg more than a decade ago and gave up his work there to move to Shanghai. The 47-year-old is the father of three.

"I'd never heard of neighborhood committees before I arrived here because there is nothing like them in the West. I had no idea what this was about at first," Candeias said. "I never thought I would be elected to one."

When Candeias first arrived in Shanghai he experienced firsthand a number of difficulties that he had not foreseen. "How could I arrange my children's hukou (residence permit)? How could we find a good nanny? These things look minor but they caused a lot of trouble then."

This resulted in his first ever contact with a neighborhood committee which helped him get through the early difficulties. So when the committee came to him to invite him to come on board in 2006, he agreed immediately.

"I understand the difficulties in managing such a large residential compound especially with people from so many different nationalities and backgrounds. I have experienced these difficulties myself," Candeias said. "Besides that if I can make new friends here, why not try?"

Candeias said that he believed neighborhood committees could be bridges to link all the members of the community, to improve communications and share ideas to help people solve problems. At university he had studied law and this inspired the committee to ask him to look after dispute resolutions for the compound.

Candeias runs an electronics company in Shanghai and is obviously very busy but he makes time to join in as many activities as he can in his neighborhood.

The Yanlord Gardens residents think highly of him - many remember the time he sorted out a problem with a cat lover whose collection of strays caused problems with several neighbors.

Prior to Candeias, Australian Ben Jason and Singaporean Lü Lilian were first elected to the neighborhood committee in 2003. Jason organized a series of parties in the community where he acted as host and often performed as well. Lü started a cooking club where residents would demonstrate and talk about special dishes from their home countries. Later Lü published a book of the club's recipes and the proceeds from the sales of the books went to charity.

In 2009 Candeias moved to Jiangsu Province for business and had to leave the committee. An American and another German resident joined the committee that year.

This year he has moved back to Shanghai and is happy to be back on the committee. The committee has organized free Chinese lessons which are proving popular with the residents and has ensured that the compound's local supermarket now stocks a variety of foreign foods and items to help some of the residents feel more at home.

Recently the Yanlord Gardens community has opened a health clinic where residents pay just 10 yuan ($1.57) to be seen by a doctor who can treat most minor complaints on the spot saving them the need to visit hospitals or expensive private clinics.

After the last election Candeias promised to listen to the complaints and problems of the residents so that the committee could work to help everyone.

Other approaches

Other residential compounds have also tried to recruit foreigners onto their neighborhood committees and management teams. In 1996 in Gubei in Changning district, a major residential compound there began welcoming foreign residents and now more than 57 percent of its 33,000 residents are foreigners, most from Japan and South Korea.

According to Tang Linyan, the head of the Gubei Ronghua Neighborhood Committee, they established a special community committee in 2009 comprised of 16 members from the neighborhood committee, the property management company and residents. Five were foreigners.

"The main responsibilities of the committee are ascertaining opinions and passing these on to the relevant government departments, organizing community activities and providing services," Tang said.

This approach to building a communications bridge between foreign residents and the committee has had positive results, she said. According to Tang, the Mid-Autumn Festival party they held last year attracted more than 500 foreigners, a record attendance.

Inspired by the Gubei committee, a similar scheme was introduced at Xintiandi, a very popular hangout for foreigners in Shanghai.

Dai Qiming is head of the Xintiandi Neighborhood Committee. "With more new high-end residential compounds being completed in the area, the population here is increasing rapidly. More than 70 percent of the 2,000 residents who moved in here last year are foreigners and they should have representation," he said. Previously there had been a social assistance center offering services to the residents but this year it became a proper neighborhood committee.

Although the neighborhood committee in Xintiandi has not actively recruited foreigners, in May five foreign residents who lived there were invited to be "community observers" to assist the committee.

"The observers don't have voting rights but they are here to ensure that foreign residents know what is going on and they can deliver us feedback from the group," Dai said.

Limits and problems

There are limits to the way foreign residents can participate in community service and management here, according to Xu Zhongzhen, the deputy director of the Shanghai Community Development Research Center.

"First of all although the number of foreign residents living in Shanghai is increasing, only a small proportion of them are immigrants or permanent residents. Most of them only live in Shanghai for brief periods. This high turnover rate is a problem," Xu said.

The first foreign neighborhood committee members at Yanlord Gardens did great work but both had to leave before their terms were up because of personal reasons or because work transferred them elsewhere. This made it hard to maintain the committee's structure.

As well different cultural values could cause conflicts within the committee's work, Xu said. Where in the West property management focuses on providing services and maintenance, for many Chinese neighborhood committees are an important adjunct to the law and should also monitor illegal or improper behavior.

"Most foreigners feel neighborhood committees are strange. Some are not interested in them because they think they are government-run organizations and are politically inspired. They prefer to join non-governmental organizations to help people," Xu said. "We have to admit that for now we lack a suitable platform that can serve foreigners as well as letting us know their real needs. We need to explore how to do this effectively."