On April 25-26, 2015, sponsored and supported by MUST Foundation and President’s Office, MUST English Debating Team sent nine members to participate in the 1st Macao Asian Parliamentary Debate Open hosted by Macau English Debating Association and the Tertiary Education Services Office, Macau SAR and organized by the Macao Polytechnic Institute.
Although the tournament was the held for the first time, it was a world-class one on a large scale, which invited the best debaters from South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Poland, Holland, China Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland to gather in Macao Polytechnic Institute. Also there were more than twenty world-class judges led by Loke Wing Fatt, the president of Singapore Association for Inter-varsity Debating from the United States, South Korea, Britain, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and China Hong Kong, etc.
Three MUST teams, members including Shen Ge, Ye Jinxin, Su Shidi, Xu Mingcai, Ren Shihao, Zhang Ruohua, Lu Yihan, Zhang Xiaoyu and Feng Tingwei, in the form of an old player with two new players joined this competition. Before the contest, the coach Gao Xiangning gave contestants a lot of systematic guidance, additional training and targeted analyses of the international hot spots, bringing them into full play in the competition.
In the contest with the teams from the University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Baptist University, Woosong University, the Assumption University of Thailand, Sun Yat-sen University and the National Taiwan University, MUST won in many round and two teams ranked far ahead of many elite teams, with which the English Debating Team got great return.
The motions of the tournament, diverse and sharp, involved issues in many fields such as the international and regional relations, sports events, the democratic politics, the education system, the relations between the sexes, science and technology media, economy and trade, etc. Through the exchanges and discussions with debaters from other universities, MUST participants have gained more profound understanding and enthusiasm of debate.
Feng Tingwei said after the competition that she had learnt many sophisticated debating skills from those outstanding debaters and judges, and she would make more efforts and devote more time on English debate. The rest participants also agreed that they’d like to take more active on practicing and studying debating, working together to create MUST English Debating Team’s brilliant tomorrow.