Ma Shanxiang: mediation is to solve real problems for people

Showing up at the "deputies' passage" during this year's Two Sessions in March, Ma Shanxiang, an expert in people's mediation who is also a deputy to the National People's Congress, told a crowd of reporters that he received about 600 people and his studio in Southwest China's Chongqing mediated over 50 disputes last year.

Ma Shanxiang (right) conducts mediation at his studio in Chongqing. [Photo/Xinhua]

"As a deputy to the People's Congress, the work of mediation means reaching out to and serving people," said Ma. "It means solving real, ideological and mental problems for people."

In 2018, he gave nearly 90 speeches at places across the country to over 90,000 staff in China's judicial administrative system, more than 20,000 police officers in Chongqing as well as students and teachers from more than a dozen universities.

Apart from giving speeches, Ma also wrote about 100 articles using eight notebooks last year. "I spend at least three hours in writing every single day," he said.

In fact, in his career over past nearly three decades, Ma has cost more than 160 notebooks by writing over five million words of notes, which can serve as the best example of his relentless focus on the mass work.

"My first dream is to be devoted to the Party's course of mass work and I've been doing this for 30 years," said Ma. His second dream is to excel in handling the mass work.

As a veteran in the field of people's mediation, Ma has his own method for the work which features the word "initiative".

He said that he always takes the initiative to talk to people who linger outside his studio, to write down the experiences he draws from those conversations, to give a helping hand to people having difficulties in going up and down stairs, and to see off people leaving his studio.

Now he is busying passing down what he learnt from the work to younger generations.

Last June, a movie named Happiness Is Coming was shown in China and Ma was the prototype of the protagonist who is a people’s mediator in the movie.

"A movie themed on the work of people's mediation can help to encourage people to solve disputes through negotiation and reconciliation," Ma commented, adding that "it will also boost the development of the grassroots mediation work."

When it comes to the role of the rule of law in the work of people's mediation, Ma said that the rule of law is the skeleton while other aspects of people's mediation are the flesh. 

"A successful mediation requires the combination of skeleton and flesh," he said.