As we suffer through assassinations, earthquakes, censorship and all forms of political and electoral mayhem, let’s just take one moment to celebrate, together, the incoming new year. The new year brings with it a renewal of hope that things will change for the better, and a re-commitment to pursue that change, to make it happen. So from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to all of you, Aloha and best wishes in the coming year.
From Edward Cody of the Washington Post:
“More than 30,000 censors are employed to monitor the Internet alone, specialists estimate. They are equipped with advanced technology to block sensitive sites and sound the alarm when words deemed off-color or politically incorrect show up on the screen. The system, part of a vast apparatus extending to newspapers, theaters and art galleries, remains part of life for most people in a China otherwise modernizing at breakneck speed.”
After nearly 300 posts written in 2007, I’ve sorted out some of the best just in case you may have missed one or two! Happy Holidays and I’m looking forward to an active 2008.
The China Internet Network Information Center(CNNIC) reports that by the end of November 2007, China had almost 73 million blog “spaces” and 47 million bloggers. “By the end of 2006, the number of blog writers was 17.5 million, and within one year the increase reached nearly 30 million, indicating the large-scale growth in number of the blog writer group,” according to the CNNIC report.
See my complete post over at the World Health Care Blog.
Just keeping up on China’s modernization wars between bikes and cars. Simon Elegant of the China Blog writes, “It seems impossible that Beijing traffic could actually get worse–and crazier–than it already is but now we’ve shifted from something like 1000 new cars on the streets every day to 1500, believe me, it is getting worse by the week.” He also noticed his first loaner bike out on the roads and observes that this may be a scheme worth considering given the problem of bikes being stolen on a regular basis.
There’s a debate that surfaces from time to time on the question of whether westerners can really know China. Most recently it emerged in a debate around investments.
Here’s one view by Richard at Asia Buisness Intelligence:
Understanding how Chinese “view the world and lead their lives” is essential to productive interaction with them, but one can not rise above shallow faux-knowledge gleaned from Western-adored emblems of Chinese culture, like tai chi, without learning the language or living and working with Chinese on a daily basis. (I have come across self-professed experts on China who can not even speak the language fluently — a defect I find scandalous.)
Richard is arguing a point in opposition to people like Jim Rogers who has a new book out, “A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World’s Greatest Market”. Martin Howell of Reuters writes about Rogers,
“Now is the time to engage China and all things Chinese,” he says. If you can’t go for a visit, take a class in tai chi and then learn about Chinese medicine, watch Chinese movies, Rogers suggests. “The point is to develop a clear sense of how Chinese people view the world and lead their lives. Try to figure out how China’s consumers will spend their hard-earned cash and where they might put it to grow.”
So this an argument ostensibly between poseurs and true experts. But both sides do an injustice to how we learn and develop cross cultural understanding. By this I mean, everyone has to begin somewhere — the beginner status in any enterprise often gets treated as something less than worthy — but humility (by the beginner) in face of the breath of human experience is required if respect is to be shown for that experience. So distinguishing between the poseur and the beginner who is making ‘beginner mistakes’ as part of the learning journey is an important one. Even the beginner has important contributions to make when he or she demonstrates, in their naivety, how one culture perceives the other.
But what is it to “know” a culture like China? What are experts really expert in? There is a great market for China “experts” these days and the dismissing of competitors is a fine art. Expert consultants must continually represent their knowledge as valuable to others; that’s what they got to sell. But experts often come with their own political and cultural baggage which may or may not be in service to the companies who hire them no matter how much they know. It’s the whole package that’s important to understand.
We have to become better cross cultural learners, that’s clear. Yet let’s get beyond these artificial pretensions to a knowledge that is ever fluid, changing and idiomatic. There is no “essential” China. It only exists in our minds or in advertising. Anyway to enter this cultural stargate may be as good as any other.
Yes , yes it’s Christmas for those who indulge. I love the season actually, no matter how commercialized it has become. I love Christmas songs but in moderation. The more jazzy the feel, the better I like it. My favorite one? “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” This song and I go way back to when I was 15 years old. My first holiday guitar recital and we played — me and about 50 other kids — that tune for a large audience of appreciative parents. It was a stunning moment and one that obviously stuck with me.
Next year — 2008 — will another year full of health care developments for the chattering classes to mull over. I expect nothing big to actually happen until the new President is firmly entrenched in his or her mighty high office. But, as you well know, no opportunity will be missed to speculate on the direction those changes will take and what they will have in store for us all. Much of this talk will be pure wishful thinking disguised as intelligent analysis. No matter, that’s what makes the world go round.
The thing is, you got to prepare yourself for what’s to come. For me, my own 2008 resolution is to keep a level head and exercise more. That’s probably the best I can realistically do, although I don’t know about the exercise part. I’ll save you any pontifications about what you should be doing in 2008, which by all signs I see, will be a momentous year. In fact, the best advice I can give anyone is simply to be careful what you wish for. You never know, we may all have to live with it.
Happy Holidays!
From a China Digital Times post translated from the China News Service:
China’s Ministry of Health and Chinese Medicine Administration have jointly issued a regulation that aims to set up a evaluation system to tally the medical ethics of doctors in various hospitals and other health care providers in the country. There are three components in the evaluation regime: self-assessment, departmental assessment and institutional assessment. A filing system will also be set up to store the records, in an effort to link the ethics scores with the doctor’s compensations and promotions. But there is one thing missing, as some commentaries point out: opinions from the patients and their families.
See my entire post over at the World Health Care Blog.
As I’ve had some time now to think about the presentations at the recent WHIT 3.0 conference, a couple comments are in order. The conference was almost totally focused on what was happening in U.S. health care. This made it exciting and relevant to us. But I can’t help thinking that we still need to better integrate a global perspective on health care.
See my complete post over at the World Health Care Blog
Reported in the China Daily:
Han Qide, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress - the country’s top legislature - said the country faces a dire situation with more women, especially professionals, and youngsters taking to smoking - which directly or indirectly kills 1 million Chinese a year.
From an economic standpoint, the tobacco industry has long been a key source of tax, which accounted for about 240 billion yuan ($31.4 billion) in 2005, 10 per cent of total State revenues, official statistics show. Additionally, the industry sustains the livelihood of millions of tobacco farmers and also provides a great number of jobs in the production and distribution of cigarettes. At the local level, the situation is even bleaker as some provinces rely mainly on the tobacco industry as the main cash cow.
There seems to be a growing sense of hopelessness among China’s health authorities about any changes to this situation soon so it may be a long way to go before the Smoker’s Republic will ever get to a positive tipping point.
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