New sessions of the provincial committees of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) have been held recently. Among local CPPCC members, there are some faces which are new, but not unfamiliar to the public. For instance, Wang Baoqiang, who won the Best New Performer prize at the 2003 Golden Horse Awards for the movie Blind Shaft, was newly elected to the CPPCC Hebei provincial committee, and Diana Pang, a category III film star from Hong Kong, is now a member of the CPPCC Gansu provincial committee.

Celebrity members make the CPPCC less opaque to the public. The public pay much more attention to these members during the discussions. Stephen Chow, a well-known star in Hong Kong elected as one of the 978 members of the 11th Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CPPCC, caused a stir for being absent from two days of discussion and arriving late the next day. The political gathering, for a long time detached from ordinary people, now has more reasons to attract them.

The celebrities have been put under intense scrutiny. Compared to other members, the quality of their proposals, analysis of public affairs and even their elections, are given an unusual amount of attention. Objectively, their appearance has successfully aroused the public's interest in the political advisory body. This sends a message to other members from more traditional channels that they need to put the same efforts into maintaining their popularity among the public.

The public is concerned with the political abilities of these celebrity members. They doubt that these stars can carry out the duties of a representative. Raymond Zhou, an assistant researcher at the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, said that although stars are also civilians who have the right to express their political viewpoints, most of them just advocate slogans which are politically correct but shallow, such as being "against hunger" and "anti-poverty."

This shows that on the one hand, the public expect more influential politicians who are close to the masses, while on the other hand they also put higher requirements on them to better perform their duties.  This reflects the public's growing demands, and should also be the trend of the development of Chinese public servants: to have both public pulling power and political ability.