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Baffling ballot proves to be a winner

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-01-27 06:56

The hall was packed with people when I arrived at 9 am on Wednesday at the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport building where the city's first car license plate lottery was to be staged.

More than 10 security guards - more than usual, I guess - were trying to control a large group of uninvited journalists who were eager to get into the room on the building's 11th floor.

A man in a brown jacket, claiming he was a photographer for a Chinese portal site, was begging to be allowed in.

"Let me take a few photos," he pleaded many times, but was turned away every time.

In addition to journalists, there were visitors flocking into the room, all hoping to witness the bonanza and perhaps smell something fishy in the process. There were far more of them than the organizers expected.

The lottery started punctually at 10 am. To ensure its transparency, the whole process was broadcast live on TV and the Internet, under the supervision of people from a designated public notarial office.

The event was also watched over by a group of supervisors and reporters - who were examining every detail for the millions watching on TV or the Internet.

The process began with the selection of six people from a total of 16 representatives of the applicants, the municipal congress and the political advisory body, who later would determine the people who would win license plates.

The 16 people were represented by 16 billiard ball-sized blue balls. Six of them were drawn out randomly.

Then with the assistance of a computer, each of the six people drew a number from 0 to 9 to form a six-digit seed number.

The seed number turned out to be 040815. A computer program matched the seed number with 17,600 of the total of 187,420 applicants and we had our winners.

The whole process lasted about 20 minutes. After another 25 minutes, applicants were able to check online to see if they had won.

Journalists, astonished by the efficiency of the process, quickly surrounded the representatives and notaries, posing all kinds of questions.

The most serious doubts centered on the computer program that connected the seed number with the winners.

"What if the data of those winners is preset and the seed number drawing is just a show?" a reporter asked.

Two mathematicians from Renmin University of China answered journalists' questions about the process.

But their constant use of technical terms and citing of "certain standards" bewildered their listeners.

After the journalists asked for simpler explanations, the mathematicians used some metaphors to try to explain the process but even this did not help that much.

In the end, the reporters had to rely on each other to work out how the result was reached.

The supervisors, some of whom were notified about their temporary job only the day before, were largely comfortable with the result.

A Beijing resident, Hu Xiaofeng, told me she never expected to be selected as a representative of the applicants nor as one of the six people determining the seed number.

"I thought some fraud could be involved in the process, but now I am convinced it was a fair process since I saw it myself," Hu said.

Although she did not win on Wednesday, Hu said she had enough patience to wait until good luck came her way.

(China Daily 01/27/2011 page5)