Beijing — Nearly 20 years after the People’s Liberation Army gunned down student protesters in the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese government is allowing students to vote, in a limited setting.

Students at Sun Yat-sen University, in the southern city of Guangzhou, voted for student-body president on Tuesday, the Reuters news agency reported. This is the first time in recent decades that all students have been allowed to vote in a university election. In the past, only members of the Communist Party’s youth league could vote, The World reported.

The sensitivity surrounding democratic reforms in China seems to have made administrators at the university hesitate to explain their decision. A university spokeswoman told Reuters that students would not grant interviews.

But the news leaked out to the Voice of America, which interviewed the candidates in a report (in Chinese) that drew attention on Chinese-language blogs.

Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong, a booming province that served as a testing ground for China’s economic reforms in the 1980s. An analyst speculated that the election was also meant to gauge public response to the notion.

“This direct election is a democratic-progress experiment,” one candidate, Chen Xia, wrote on her campaign blog, according to Reuters. “Along with everyone else, I feel fortunate to be able to become a pioneer.” —Mara Hvistendahl