Zhang Qian

zhqcindy@163.com

Two high school juniors from Shenzhen won the annual National High School Debate League of China that took place in Beijing earlier this month.

To win the league, the two debaters, Zhang Mingmei and Wang Kailong, had to struggle through 18 rounds of debate in three days, together with nearly 300 other debaters from all around China.

“It was very exhausting, even though we did not move around much physically in those three days, our brains were running at full steam all day long,” Zhang grinned when recalling her memory of joining the competition with her partner, also her classmate at Shenzhen Middle School.

Both Zhang and Wang are 11th graders at this top high school in Shenzhen. It was Zhang who first decided to join the national debate league and then asked Wang to pair up with her.

“His oral English is excellent and I thought it would be a bonus point for our team since the debate competition is in English and follows a U.S. debate system,” said the girl.

For each season of the debate league, a topic concerning controversial social issues is selected. The topic for this season was the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI).

The term, UBI, stands for an allotted amount of money given by the government to everyone in the country, either fixed or scaled, with its purpose being to help people stay above the poverty line. As a notion old enough to be found in a pamphlet written in 1797 by Thomas Paine, UBI has often been discussed, but has only been tested in a few countries around the world.

The Shenzhen pair attributed their success to their well-prepared research on academic theories and their spontaneous performance that showed logical thinking. “Tactics are extremely importation when debating and we are glad that both of us did great during the competition,” said Zhang.

Preparation work for the topic started early in July when the Shenzhen pair decided to join the league this year. “We did thorough research on the topic and I think that’s one of our strengths when we were debating with our rivals on the stage because we were fully prepared,” said Wang.

Since each round of the debates had the same topic, every pair got chances to argue both the pro and con sides. Zhang said that it was not the debaters’ personal opinions that mattered, but the debating techniques of each group that eventually won the judges’ hearts.

The girl remembered that two debaters from a top high school in Shanghai attempted to mislead the judges by repeatedly paraphrasing Zhang and Wang’s statements in a different direction, but the Shenzhen pair eventually won over two out of the three judges with their logical thinking and credible evidence.

Though the competition wrapped up almost two weeks ago, the joy of winning is yet to fade. Both the two students’ families are thrilled about their achievements and celebrations have been held.

Now both Zhang and Wang are preparing to study abroad for a year in Germany. When they return from Europe, they are going to apply to study at universities in the United States.