According to the rules, a meeting should allow the airing of as many different opinions as possible concerning a motion. Everybody has the chance to state their ideas within a fixed length of time. People have to state clearly whether they are for or against the motion at the very beginning of the speech.

Yuan learnt that these rules were introduced to China more than 100 years ago. "But in those days, China was in civil war and the procedure was not spread well under those circumstances," Yuan said.

In 2003, Yuan came back to China and started his own business. In the process of dealing with other business people and government officials, he found they also had similar problems in holding meetings. Yuan saw the chance and decided to devote his time to spreading Robert's Rules of Order in China.

For Yuan, there are four factors in China that make the spread of Robert's Rules of Order possible: More and more homeowners are organizing themselves independently to protect the property rights endorsed by the Constitution; minority shareholders are learning to protect their rights and interests; NGOs are improving their self-governance capacities, and rural selfgovernment organizations (cooperatives/village committees) have mushroomed and they need to establish a democratic and efficient decisionmaking process.

"All these factors offer the possibilities of spreading Robert's Rules of Order in China," Yuan said.

In early 2006, Yuan stopped his business and spent one and a half years translating Robert's Rules of Order. After completing the translation, he started a new company in 2007 to instruct people on how to hold meetings for business units and organizations.

In April 2007, Yuan spent a month teaching Robert's Rules of Order in a law firm in Beijing. "They had already built up an effective procedure before my training, but after one month, they still couldn't get used to some of the rules, including asking for the host's permission before speaking," Yuan said.

Nantang experiment

In May 2008, introduced by Kou Yanding, a female documentary maker and NGO worker in Beijing, Yuan met Yang, who was very interested in adopting Robert's Rules of Order in arranging village meetings. Yuan also wanted to see whether this Western procedure could work in Chinese villages.

Yuan had never worked in any villages before so this was fresh and challenging. At first, he didn't know how to explain the rules in an understandable way to villagers.

"Words like motion, amendment and election are so far away from the villagers' lives," said Kou, who went to the village with Yuan.

Volunteers recruited by Yuan then created shows about problems with meetings and present them to Nantang villagers. "It worked very well," Yang said. "After the shows, we asked the villagers to find out the problems revealed in them and instructed them how to avoid similar problems."

Yuan visited Nantang three times in 2008 and finally worked out the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative Conference Regulations based on Robert's Rules of Order. There were nine articles in the regulations at the beginning and by the end of the process it increased to 15.

Kou filmed the whole process of Yuan's training in the village and saw the changes with the villagers. "Everybody is actually willing to be involved in village issues and they just need an effective way to express that," Kou said.

But there are some habits that couldn't be modified within a short time. According to Kou, at the last meeting of the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative she and Yuan attended before they left the village, some people still said "opposition to you" instead of "opposition to your motion."

"It will take some time," Yang said. After the training in 2008, the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative started to adopt Robert's Rules of Order to make decisions on controversial issues. Now, newcomers to the village have to learn and adapt themselves to the new format of the meetings.

"But we don't have to use it on every meeting as in some cases, when the majority of people all agree on an issue, we don't need to discuss and vote," Yang said.

Based on their successful pilot in Nantang, Kou and Yuan wrote the book Operable Democracy, which was published in April 2012.

The meeting on May 2 ended with a vote on the issue of who should pay for the baby chickens offered to the senior villagers to raise—the cooperative or the villagers themselves.

"We finally voted and the decision was that the costs should be split 50-50 between the villagers and the cooperative. If the villagers raise the chickens well, they will get a bonus, so it will not be a burden but a motivation for the villagers," Yang said.

After half a month, Yang and other members of the cooperative visited the senior villagers involved in the project and found it worked very well.

"Now, I'm working with Yuan on setting up a standard on what issues should be discussed with Robert's Rules of Order and what should not," said Yang.

Email us at: yuanyuan@bjreview.com