Municipal representatives from Shanghai, China will participate in a public forum at Eastern during their visit to Charleston.

The public forum is set for 9:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. Thursday in the Charleston-Mattoon Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. It will include a Q&A session. The forum is open to the general public and Eastern employees and students.

The representatives are from the legislative delegation of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Shanghai. Charleston will be the only place in the United States they visit other than Albany, New York, where they will be guests of the New York State Assembly.

Guoping Wang, the chair of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is the highest ranking member of the six-member delegation. The other member with him will be economist Xiangcai Zhong.

This forum comes in the wake of current threats posed by North Korea, ongoing economic discussions between China and the US and the upcoming opening of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October, according to a press release.

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference is an organization that aims to promote a socialist democracy in China’s political activities, according to its website.  It deals with the political consultation, democratic supervision and deliberation and administration of state affairs.

Mao Zhedong served as the first chair of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 1949.

The News staff can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].