Liu Ping wanted to be an everyman's candidate in a race for a local delegate to the National People's Congress. She wanted to represent her neighbors in the Yushu District of Xinyu, a city in Jiangxi Province. She gave it her all.

But the high-school educated woman who retired in 2009 from Yuanxingang Equipment and Materials Co., a branch of Xinyu Iron and Steel Group, found all roads blocked.