EE4 student Xian Huan has been a NUS Chinese Debate First team member for the past three years. It is a highly respected and sought-after position, and one that carries immense responsibility with it as well. Xian Huan has shouldered these responsibilities efficiently, representing both his university and Singapore at the highest levels of competition available.

Xian Huan was first attracted to Chinese debating because it was new opportunity for him to learn and explore a unique arena of competition. At the time, NUS Chinese debating was still in its infancy, and the team was preparing for the first Singapore-Malaysia Chinese Debate Open. Even though the team was young and inexperienced, they were able to reach the semi-finals and were able to reach a higher rank than NTU. This qualified them to represent Singapore at the International Varsity Debates in 2001.

The International Varsity Debates is a biennial competition that is hosted by different universities around the world. Jointly organized by MediaCorp Singapore and China Central Television (CCTV), top universities from all over the world, such as China, Singapore, Australia, UK, US, Canada, and Malaysia are invited to compete in this event. All the matches are broadcast on TV and has an audience of least 300,000 people in China alone. The competition is intense, and preparation is the key to success.

The NUS team held trained intensively for one month. They improved a lot and emerged were able to reach the semi-finals in the international event, which has been the best achievement for Singapore so far. Xian Huan was also awarded “Best Speaker of the Match” in the quarter-final match against Sydney University. Unfortunately, they lost to a much stronger team, Wu Han University from China, in the semi-final match and stopped their first International Varsity Debate journey there.