exosculate
a stagger with a beat
Jessiedog said:It's already happening.
Woof
I know, and sadly Chinas non-holistic developmental curve (at an extraordinary pace at that) is just making something which is already bad, worse.
understanding China better
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I know, and sadly Chinas non-holistic developmental curve (at an extraordinary pace at that) is just making something which is already bad, worse.
Yeah!exosculate said:I know, and sadly Chinas non-holistic developmental curve (at an extraordinary pace at that) is just making something which is already bad, worse.
As I've said, the leadership is belatedly waking up to the seriousness of the situation.
What will be done to ameliorate the situation over the medium term remains to be seen. I do believe that the awareness of the necessity for action is increasing rapidly, but balancing development and the sustainability thereof is always going to be a tough choice in China - at least for the next decade.
Some good news is China's efforts in renewable electricity sources - more than might be imagined and with fairly stringent targets of percentages of power to be derived from renewable sources by 2015 (I'll try and find a link when I've a minute).
Woof
bump!
The appeal court has upheld Ching's five year sentence - without having a hearing.
Medical parole is the only chance now - he's already been in jail nearly two years.
Woof
Ching Cheong was released just before Chinese New Year after nearly 3 years in jail.
That's good!
Woof
Just a month and a half to go here, then it's back to reality.
It makes me feel kind of sad, all told.
It makes me feel kind of sad, all told.
CharlieAddict
nekomimi rocks!!!
you leaving china?
Yeah back to the UK to study for a year... Then we'll see what happens.
Reminds me of my return to UK to study after nine years in bangkok. It was a very very sobering situation i found myself in! It didn't help that the summer i returned to had been cancelled, and the trains were running at miniscule speeds for months while they investigate hairline cracks on the rails. Or something like that.
Good luck mate! Incidentally, i half went back to england to see how i'd feel about no longer living in thailand, and in the end just could not wait to get back here to continue my life...
Hello jessie.
I would find it interesting if you're able to chuck in a brief summary of how china has changed/progressed/degenerated in these 19 years. It goes without saying that the country must be somewhat different today compared to 1989, but in what ways?
It can of course be compared to the massacre (the far worse massacre i think) in burma the year before. In burma however the country is probably worse off than 20 years ago, with probably no good coming out of the loss of life at all.
Would i be right in saying that because of the tiannamen episode, that things got better for chinese in general? Or did that just happen anyway?
It's a bit different... China's not such a place you fall in love with like Thailand is. It can be great but can be very annoying as well. Thailand is exotic, green, warm, friendly. China is grey, cold half the year, barren, and sometimes rude.
That said the cost of living is still cheap and that's going to be hard to adjust to in Britain.
bump
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
I'm late to this thread - sorry if I've missed responses to this on the way.
China's been reducing the amount of poverty and the wealth gap at an astounding rate.
26 million out of a population of 1.3 billion is 2%.
How does the UK stack up?
purves grundy
ambient clown remix
Apart from anything else (of which there is much) there's a disparity in the sources there don't you think? You use a popular media site to get a couple of figures for China, and a brilliantly critical organisation to obtain some complex data on poverty in Britain.
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
They're hardly comparable anyway - living costs and median incomes are so different. The point is that even 90 million in poverty is not a large percentage of the 1.3 billion population - it's just an impressively big sounding number.
Meanwhile the UK and the US are amongst the richest countries in the world, yet have large areas which are at third world poverty levels. And their income gaps are widening, whilst China's is decreasing.
It's not so much about drawing direct comparisons as being careful to put it into a meaningful context.
Yossarian
⏭️
ymu said:
There's a vast income gap in China and it's getting wider - those figures you've quoted are from a Chinese government mouthpiece and as such are next to useless, but even the same source admits to an income gap.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200412/16/eng20041216_167590.html
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
Yes - it is a massive income gap, largely because of the large numbers of rural poor rather than a particularly rich elite. China has approx 8% of the world's poorest, but 20% of the world's population. For incomes at the world median, China has around 35% of the world total - but very very few at the super-rich end of the scale.
By contrast, Europe and North America have people right at the very poorest level - in the 1% of the poorest people in the world, with quite sharp increases as you reach the very richest end of the scale.
(See attached image, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/430626/2006-World-Household-Wealth-Distribution).
Stiglitz isn't a mouthpiece for China, and he's a pretty good economist as well as former head of the World Bank.
Joseph Stiglitz said:
China is still a developing economy - it's hard to make direct comparisons with the West. But they don't stack up that badly.
Attachments
My Most Vivid Memory of China
I spent three months travelling around China last year and here is my most vivid memory of the country.
In March last year, while staying at the IYHA hostel on Gulang-yu Island off of the city of Xiamen in Fujian province, I met several Chinese students who were backpacking around their own country. They were a very friendly bunch and keen to practise their English. At the time I was travelling with a Northerner called James. We had mooted the idea of exploring the interior of Fujian province, which features fortified Hakka roundhouses, but were wary of going into rural China without the ability to communicate. After discussing the roundhouses with the Chinese students, one of them, who was of Hakka ancestry, told us that he had planned to go too and suggested we travel together.
We set off at dawn the next morning and travelled for several hours on various buses that got smaller and smaller and roads that became increasingly treacherous. After several hours of driving we got to the town which lay at the heartland of the remote Hakka region. The rain hadn't relented all day and the town made for a pretty miserable sight - a typical slapdash concrete and breezeblock affair huddled in the bottom of a valley under heavy grey skies.
We had a very good late lunch from the local restaurant before trying to solicit the services of three motorcyclists, who were the traditional means of private transport in these areas. By this point Young, the Chinese student, was in much the same position as us. This far into Fujian province very few people spoke any Mandarin or Young's native Cantonese. Eventually we found some motorcyclists who could communicate with Young and after a while haggling, which involved a lot of them gesticualting at the mud and the rain, we settled on a deal.
The whole afternoon was taken up by touring the roundhouses in the surrounding villages. That evening the motorcyclists dropped us off in a picturesque little village and told us that they would pick us up at 8 the next morning. It was still light so we decided to wander around and take a few photos. There were several roundhouses in the village which were in many ways much more interesting than the large state sanctioned UNESCO protected examples that we had seen earlier. The locals didn't seem to mind or notice us wandering around so we'd often just walk straight through the front door of the houses into the little central courtyard and start taking pictures of the clans as they went about their normal business.
After exploring three or four roundhouses in this fashion we were eventually spoken to in the next one. Initially we thought we might have overstepped the mark and so started apologising as we made our way out, but the old man who had spoken to us from inside one of the rooms looking onto the courtyard motioned to us with his hand and told us to join him. The room was rather spartan with a central table set against one wall and three benches on its remaining sides. There were a couple of heroic faded socialist realist posters on the walls featuring the Chinese space program and an agricultural project. James, Young and I sat down while the old man shouted for his wife to bring in some tea. A few moments later she turned up with a pot and some cups and saucers and the old man started into a very elaborate tea ceremony, which Young jokingly translated as a Kung-Fu tea technique.
Understandably Young did most of the talking and would occasionally translate the gist of the conversation for us. Over the course of the next 30 minutes Young and the old man became increasingly animated in their conversation and the Young's updates gradually dwindled as a result. Now the Chinese in my experience are a pretty up front bunch and like nothing better than a good, loud forthright conversation so it was difficult to work out whether Young and the old men were getting more emotional and agitated or just warming to their theme. The answer arrived shortly afterwards when tears appeared on Young's cheek as the old man was talking. Shortly after that Young turned to us and told us what he had just heard.
The old man was disabled but had managed to find a wife, who was also disabled, with whom he started a family when he was in his early 20s. The government had a program in place to help disabled peasants and provide them with a monthly stipend for them and their family to live on. He had only received this stipend for a few years early in his married life. After that it had largely been appropriated by corrupt officials in the local communist party and ever since he had received a token amount (four or five pounds if I recall correctly). He then had to try and find work in the fields to feed his family despite being unable to walk. He had spent the rest of his life working more or less every day in other's people's fields for a pittance. All his children had gone to work from the day that they physically could but now he had a young daughter who was showing exceptional promise in her mathematics classes. She had won a scholarship to a local bording school for gifted children and he had been told by the teachers that she would definitely be able to make it to a top university. A large amount rested on this girls education: family pride, status and income. But earlier that week he had had to withdraw her from her school because he couldn't afford the fees. He was too old to go on working and could not bring in any more money so she had to return to work in his stead.
By this point Young was distraught and angry. He was your typical Chinese elite kid. Very bright, very confident and very patriotic. He had taken us on this little adventure into the centre of China to demonstrate his country's history and find out about his own family background. In many ways he had wanted us to see the diversity and richness of Chinese culture to go with the glitz and dynamism of the Eastern coastal cities. But now we had stumbled onto an example of the corruption and misery that characterises the daily grind for millions of Chinese peasants.
We stayed about 20 minutes longer and Young repeatedly broke down in tears, at one point he looked completely inconsolable when the old man jumped off of the bench onto the contraption that he used to shuffle around the floor of the house so as to demonstrate his disability. Eventually I and James thought it was best to try and leave and give Young a break, we couldn't see how staying there was going to do anyone any favours. As we left the old man invited us for dinner that night. We agreed and decided that we'd bring along our own dinner from our guesthouse. That night we ate with him and the few members of his family who dared sit at the same table as the laowei. Eventually we left and retreated to the river which ran through the centre of the town where we sipped a few beers until the lights went off.
Why does this story stay with me most vividly out of my whole time in China? I think it's because of the manner in which Young was the one who was most shocked out of all us. It hammered home the reality of living in a coccoon of state propoganda. Young genuinely believed that the peasants lived decent lives but 24 hours later he was loudly telling anyone who would listen that the Communist party was a piece of shit and that he was going to set up an anti-corruption pro-human rights society when he got back to university. The change was so acute and so passionate that in the end the abiding memory of living Young was one of hope. He was one of millions of young Chinese who are dynamic, confident go-getting types who care deeply about their country. After meeting Young I firmly believe that China can and will change. Once, and if, the communist party and its propaganda machine go under it's young Chinese like Young who have the ability and the hunger to transform China into a genuinely fair and free state within a matter of a few years.
I spent three months travelling around China last year and here is my most vivid memory of the country.
In March last year, while staying at the IYHA hostel on Gulang-yu Island off of the city of Xiamen in Fujian province, I met several Chinese students who were backpacking around their own country. They were a very friendly bunch and keen to practise their English. At the time I was travelling with a Northerner called James. We had mooted the idea of exploring the interior of Fujian province, which features fortified Hakka roundhouses, but were wary of going into rural China without the ability to communicate. After discussing the roundhouses with the Chinese students, one of them, who was of Hakka ancestry, told us that he had planned to go too and suggested we travel together.
We set off at dawn the next morning and travelled for several hours on various buses that got smaller and smaller and roads that became increasingly treacherous. After several hours of driving we got to the town which lay at the heartland of the remote Hakka region. The rain hadn't relented all day and the town made for a pretty miserable sight - a typical slapdash concrete and breezeblock affair huddled in the bottom of a valley under heavy grey skies.
We had a very good late lunch from the local restaurant before trying to solicit the services of three motorcyclists, who were the traditional means of private transport in these areas. By this point Young, the Chinese student, was in much the same position as us. This far into Fujian province very few people spoke any Mandarin or Young's native Cantonese. Eventually we found some motorcyclists who could communicate with Young and after a while haggling, which involved a lot of them gesticualting at the mud and the rain, we settled on a deal.
The whole afternoon was taken up by touring the roundhouses in the surrounding villages. That evening the motorcyclists dropped us off in a picturesque little village and told us that they would pick us up at 8 the next morning. It was still light so we decided to wander around and take a few photos. There were several roundhouses in the village which were in many ways much more interesting than the large state sanctioned UNESCO protected examples that we had seen earlier. The locals didn't seem to mind or notice us wandering around so we'd often just walk straight through the front door of the houses into the little central courtyard and start taking pictures of the clans as they went about their normal business.
After exploring three or four roundhouses in this fashion we were eventually spoken to in the next one. Initially we thought we might have overstepped the mark and so started apologising as we made our way out, but the old man who had spoken to us from inside one of the rooms looking onto the courtyard motioned to us with his hand and told us to join him. The room was rather spartan with a central table set against one wall and three benches on its remaining sides. There were a couple of heroic faded socialist realist posters on the walls featuring the Chinese space program and an agricultural project. James, Young and I sat down while the old man shouted for his wife to bring in some tea. A few moments later she turned up with a pot and some cups and saucers and the old man started into a very elaborate tea ceremony, which Young jokingly translated as a Kung-Fu tea technique.
Understandably Young did most of the talking and would occasionally translate the gist of the conversation for us. Over the course of the next 30 minutes Young and the old man became increasingly animated in their conversation and the Young's updates gradually dwindled as a result. Now the Chinese in my experience are a pretty up front bunch and like nothing better than a good, loud forthright conversation so it was difficult to work out whether Young and the old men were getting more emotional and agitated or just warming to their theme. The answer arrived shortly afterwards when tears appeared on Young's cheek as the old man was talking. Shortly after that Young turned to us and told us what he had just heard.
The old man was disabled but had managed to find a wife, who was also disabled, with whom he started a family when he was in his early 20s. The government had a program in place to help disabled peasants and provide them with a monthly stipend for them and their family to live on. He had only received this stipend for a few years early in his married life. After that it had largely been appropriated by corrupt officials in the local communist party and ever since he had received a token amount (four or five pounds if I recall correctly). He then had to try and find work in the fields to feed his family despite being unable to walk. He had spent the rest of his life working more or less every day in other's people's fields for a pittance. All his children had gone to work from the day that they physically could but now he had a young daughter who was showing exceptional promise in her mathematics classes. She had won a scholarship to a local bording school for gifted children and he had been told by the teachers that she would definitely be able to make it to a top university. A large amount rested on this girls education: family pride, status and income. But earlier that week he had had to withdraw her from her school because he couldn't afford the fees. He was too old to go on working and could not bring in any more money so she had to return to work in his stead.
By this point Young was distraught and angry. He was your typical Chinese elite kid. Very bright, very confident and very patriotic. He had taken us on this little adventure into the centre of China to demonstrate his country's history and find out about his own family background. In many ways he had wanted us to see the diversity and richness of Chinese culture to go with the glitz and dynamism of the Eastern coastal cities. But now we had stumbled onto an example of the corruption and misery that characterises the daily grind for millions of Chinese peasants.
We stayed about 20 minutes longer and Young repeatedly broke down in tears, at one point he looked completely inconsolable when the old man jumped off of the bench onto the contraption that he used to shuffle around the floor of the house so as to demonstrate his disability. Eventually I and James thought it was best to try and leave and give Young a break, we couldn't see how staying there was going to do anyone any favours. As we left the old man invited us for dinner that night. We agreed and decided that we'd bring along our own dinner from our guesthouse. That night we ate with him and the few members of his family who dared sit at the same table as the laowei. Eventually we left and retreated to the river which ran through the centre of the town where we sipped a few beers until the lights went off.
Why does this story stay with me most vividly out of my whole time in China? I think it's because of the manner in which Young was the one who was most shocked out of all us. It hammered home the reality of living in a coccoon of state propoganda. Young genuinely believed that the peasants lived decent lives but 24 hours later he was loudly telling anyone who would listen that the Communist party was a piece of shit and that he was going to set up an anti-corruption pro-human rights society when he got back to university. The change was so acute and so passionate that in the end the abiding memory of living Young was one of hope. He was one of millions of young Chinese who are dynamic, confident go-getting types who care deeply about their country. After meeting Young I firmly believe that China can and will change. Once, and if, the communist party and its propaganda machine go under it's young Chinese like Young who have the ability and the hunger to transform China into a genuinely fair and free state within a matter of a few years.
Sorry, but this is complete rubbish. Even living in a council flat on benefits affords a far better standard of living than the poor in China can possibly afford.
The only problem in the UK is the poverty of ideas. You go into poor areas here, and people look so damned unhealthy, so moribund. But in pure stuff, they are still way ahead of the poor in China, I'm afraid.
ymu
Niall Ferguson's deep-cover sock-puppet
I was referring to the graph, which quite clearly shows part of the US and European populations living on incomes in the bottom 1% of world incomes. We do have people living in that sort of poverty, even if they're not as numerous or even visible to the majority enjoying the "Western" lifestyle. It also shows that the proceeds of economic growth in China has been much more equally divided than in the West, despite the large numbers still in poverty.
As I've already said, you cannot make direct comparisons between developing and developed countries. Incomes are a lot lower in China than they are in the West, as they are in any developing economy but they still have a very low share of the world's ultra-poor, given the size of the population.
I'm still not convinced, unless you're talking about people living in traveller sites and so on - and they could be 'housed' if they wanted, but they choose to live that lifestyle.
Just for instance, even the poorest people here will have proper sewerage in their houses. They will be able to drink the water out of the tap. They will be able to get good quality free healthcare. None of these apply in China.
Many people in rural China might not have access to a hospital at all, and if they do, they must pay through the nose for it (not as much as in say the USA but the quality is terrible and it can really add up when set against local salaries).
And the Chinese government's idea of the poverty line of 100 RMB a month - I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Even allowing for the 'cheaper' cost of living in china, that's still nothing.
Just for instance, even the poorest people here will have proper sewerage in their houses. They will be able to drink the water out of the tap. They will be able to get good quality free healthcare. None of these apply in China.
Many people in rural China might not have access to a hospital at all, and if they do, they must pay through the nose for it (not as much as in say the USA but the quality is terrible and it can really add up when set against local salaries).
And the Chinese government's idea of the poverty line of 100 RMB a month - I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Even allowing for the 'cheaper' cost of living in china, that's still nothing.
bumpety bumpety bump.
i guess it's all gone a bit quiet on the China front these days
i guess it's all gone a bit quiet on the China front these days
Rock Bottom
Second Wind
bumpety bumpety bump.
i guess it's all gone a bit quiet on the China front these days
yeah, pretty much - same old, same old...
sleeping tiger, as they are prone to saying.
dennisr
the acceptable face
bumpety bumpety bump.
i guess it's all gone a bit quiet on the China front these days
China: 58,000 "mass incidents" in first three months of 2009
The first three months of this year, as the pace of job losses and migrants returning home has skyrocketed, China has seen an astonishing 58,000 so-called 'mass incidents'. This is government-speak for strikes, street protests, road-blocks and other forms of popular struggle. The new figures come from Hong Kong agencies monitoring political stability in mainland China. These state that in the period January to March 2009 there were 58,000 incidents involving 25 or more people. Should this trend continue all year, then 2009 would break all previous records with over 230,000 'mass incidents', compared to 120,000 in 2008 and 90,000 in 2006.
http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/722/
Some of the struggles being fought at the moment:
http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/722/?tpid=6&tpl=9
yep, all back to normal
dennisr
the acceptable face
China's crisis could be worse than America's
Nearly 30 million migrants have lost their jobs. The exact number of factory closures is unclear, but in Guangdong we learn that 20,000 factories closed in the last three months of 2008, with the loss of two million jobs. No large economy is experiencing such an abrupt slowdown, and because China is bigger and a lot poorer, the crisis is in many ways worse than even in the U.S. The Chinese economy hit zero growth in real terms, in the final quarter of 2008, from a rate of 10 percent a year ago.
http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/713/?tpid=2
An eyewitness account of the current economic crisis in eastern China
The sky in Hong Kong has become clearer, since large numbers of factories in the Pearl River Delta region have terminated production. In the first two months of 2009 the total amount of electricity used in China has decreased by 10% compared with the previous year, and in the province of Guangdong this figure reaches 20%. The total volume of shipping containers being transported at the port of Yantian in the city of Shenzhen dropped by 10.6%, and 80% of the containers placed in the port are now empty ones. The transportation depots of Shenzhen Airport (the third largest in the country) are empty even in the morning hours which usually would be very busy. On the main highway between Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as other motorways, there are very low levels of traffic, and a journey that usually would take 2-3 hours now only require around 45 minutes.....
http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/697/?tpid=2
Nearly 30 million migrants have lost their jobs. The exact number of factory closures is unclear, but in Guangdong we learn that 20,000 factories closed in the last three months of 2008, with the loss of two million jobs. No large economy is experiencing such an abrupt slowdown, and because China is bigger and a lot poorer, the crisis is in many ways worse than even in the U.S. The Chinese economy hit zero growth in real terms, in the final quarter of 2008, from a rate of 10 percent a year ago.
http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/713/?tpid=2
An eyewitness account of the current economic crisis in eastern China
The sky in Hong Kong has become clearer, since large numbers of factories in the Pearl River Delta region have terminated production. In the first two months of 2009 the total amount of electricity used in China has decreased by 10% compared with the previous year, and in the province of Guangdong this figure reaches 20%. The total volume of shipping containers being transported at the port of Yantian in the city of Shenzhen dropped by 10.6%, and 80% of the containers placed in the port are now empty ones. The transportation depots of Shenzhen Airport (the third largest in the country) are empty even in the morning hours which usually would be very busy. On the main highway between Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as other motorways, there are very low levels of traffic, and a journey that usually would take 2-3 hours now only require around 45 minutes.....
http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/697/?tpid=2
This is true - things are bleaker on the mainland than at any time in a generation.
That said, in the huge, complex paradox that China is, there are still pockets (of many tens of millions of people each,) that are doing not too bad and, overall, the country is coming from a very low base compared with the UK (US, western Europe, etc.).
Hundreds of millions of recently impoverished, highly motivated individuals, families, communities and cultures, living within Greater China, have been unleashed into the "global village" within the last 30 years - most in the last twenty.
This emergence from poverty of 400,000,000 - from subsistence farming to starvation to subscription internet - within such a short space of time is nothing other than a truly astonishing achievement. A further 300,000,000 are doing far better than ever by a quantam leap.
Unfortunately, given the way global capitalism seems to be heading, I fear that it may take much longer to address the needs of the remaining 600,000,000 who remain mired in abject, grinding poverty.
I'd hate to try and survive on US$ 15/month.
The capitalists have broken the system, the poor will suffer.
And yet, at the end of the day, China has been churning out 5 million graduates a year for a while and has a people hungry for advancement and, still, ever willing to work hard and be patient.
The balance of power is shifting.
May you live in interesting times.
Woof
dennisr
the acceptable face
May you live in interesting times.
Woof
indeed (and good points, those raised expectations maybe reflected in the growing social movements - cheers)
dennisr
the acceptable face
Thousands of college students in Nanjing city clash with police
Authorities nervous in lead up to Tiananmen 1989 massacre
http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2009/05/2001.html
"Thousands of students fought with police in the southern Chinese city of Nanjing after the city’ s administration officers beat up student vendors. The incident occurred on Monday evening, 18 May, at a time of high alert for the ‘communist’ authorities ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Massacre – the events in Tiananmen 1989. Five students, including one female student from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, were reportedly beaten up by Nanjing City Management [Bureau], trying to clear the area in front of the university. This led to a street-blocking demonstration by thousands of students from that university. A bloody clash between thousands of students and riot police reportedly ensued, continuing into Tuesday morning."
Authorities nervous in lead up to Tiananmen 1989 massacre
http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2009/05/2001.html
"Thousands of students fought with police in the southern Chinese city of Nanjing after the city’ s administration officers beat up student vendors. The incident occurred on Monday evening, 18 May, at a time of high alert for the ‘communist’ authorities ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Massacre – the events in Tiananmen 1989. Five students, including one female student from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, were reportedly beaten up by Nanjing City Management [Bureau], trying to clear the area in front of the university. This led to a street-blocking demonstration by thousands of students from that university. A bloody clash between thousands of students and riot police reportedly ensued, continuing into Tuesday morning."
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