Major advantages of the proposed change are:
1. Environmental friendly; no carbon emission.
2. Create jobs. Assuming 4 people are needed to lift each litter, this proposal creates 32 million employment opportunities.
 3. Save $150 billion yuan annually on government vehicle operating cost.
 4. Eliminate traffic congestion in metropolitan areas.
 5. Entrepreneurs will emulate what officials do and thus double its impact on job growth. .
 6. Commoners can stop the litter to air their grievances

Unlike most blogs about China and East Asia, we tend to stay away from current political affairs and are more on the cultural side, though we do dabble in politics every once in awhile. We figured the political and current event scene was covered ad nauseum by other blogs out there and didn’t want to be a ‘me too’ site. If you like music, movies, photography, culture, travel and food, you might enjoy checking us out.

We also have a continuing feature, a photo after every 3rd post, from Jesse, who lives in Beijing and has his own blog where he posts one photo per day, everyday. His headlines are as good as his photos!

As the title states, our site is called Pacific Rim Shots. You can find us here: http://pacificrimshots.com/

Hope to see you there!

Many from the richest part of today’s China did not believe in talks about common prosperity and so from Hong Kong in years 1984-1997 (when HK was returned under Chinese control) nearly 1 million people emigrated (about one eight of population).

(Despite different average in Hong Kong is economical inequality even bigger than in rest of China.)

Even more people did not return from study abroad. To be more concrete: in years 1987-2009 it was about 1 160 000 people. But gradually returns more and more, during for world crisis year 2009 it was already 56 percent.

In that time they returned because of problems abroad, many with foreign passport (although sometimes hidden – China does not allow double citizenship), to try find a job at home or to outsource their business to country with lower costs.

But together with growing return of so called “sea turtles” another escape began – this time of the richest Chinese.

To be fair: people with money were escaping from China already before. In connection with this it is common to mention leaving corrupt officials running off with 50 billion US dollars. But, how China Media Project points out, quoted number comes from year 2002, so it needs serious update.

Since 2009 began mass exodus in group of rich.
In recent study released by China Merchants Bank is mentioned that till now emigrated abroad more the quarter of 20 000 Chinese multimillionaires (with more than 100 million yuan in assets, over USD 15 million), and around 60% of those with more than USD 1,500,000 in assets – this number is close to million – have already or are planning to do so.
The richest are emigrating economically, what means they buy new citizenship by big enough investment typically to American, Canadian or Australian economy. Together with investment to already cheaper Western properties.

Translated from cina.exil.sk, author Tibor Blazko.

allvoices.com, Mar 05, 2011

In the coming decades, the China-US relations will be deteriorating if the US doesn’t adjust its strategic positioning. It seems the Hu-Obama summit held earlier month is unlikely to dramatically ease the tensions between the two countries, let alone change the trajectory. In my eyes, one major threat to the U.S. determination to maintain its global hegemony.

To a great degree, China’s assertiveness is the result of the wishful thinking by some non-Chinese observers. The more determined the US is to maintain its global leadership, the more sensitive it is to China’s growth. It is a new version of a Chinese fable which says one sees a snake when a bow is reflected in a cup full of water. Once you believe China intends to challenge the US global primacy, it is easy to “find” sufficient evidences. In fact, many of the evidences are intentionally or unintentionally fabricated by the observers. A good case in point is that certain American commentators suggest the traditional Chinese culture determines China’s aggressive stance. They cited the example of the implication of “China”, which means “the central kingdom”. This sounds ridiculous to the majority of the Chinese people, because the Chinese people bear in minds the old motto “The moon waxes only to wane, water brims only to overflow”. This partially accounts for Deng Xiaoping’s legacy “Never to be in front”.

Once the US concludes that China is plotting to defy the US, the US is more likely to adopt the strategy to contain China. If China realizes the US is containing it, China will take measures to defend it. Now for many Chinese people, China has been forced to defend itself when the US-led coalition is encircling China. In this context, the US will find further excuses to curb China. One misinterpretation leads to another miscalculation. Understandably, the strategic mistrust between the two countries escalates. It is a spiral of conflicts, which harms the interests of both countries. Unfortunately, this is the case in the Western Pacific region today. In China, many people now believe the US is seeking to contain China even if their governmental officials reiterate that the US welcomes a growing China. To a great extent, the China-US relations is determined by how the US treats China.

Some hardliners in the US may expect to press China to further integrate into the international order designed and led by the US to serve the US interests. Some hawks are so arrogant as to dictate terms to China. They are deadly wrong. In 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded China, but China eventually drove them out. I am sure today that the majority of the Chinese people would rather die than surrender. But, is the US today capable to mobilize eight countries to fight against China? I am not sure. Every country knows clearly that the rise of China is unstoppable. When China becomes powerful enough, will China take revenge in certain ways? I am not sure, either. China is far from aggressive, but it is expecting true respect, not only in words, but also in action.

So many problems in China are preventing it from growing into a global leadership: widening social gap, rampant corruption, ecological degradation. The country is richer, but the majority of the people remain poor. Information flow is still restricted, which I believe is a big obstacle to China’s growth. China’s global appeal is so limited while so many people are attempting to immigrate to the US. In a word, China is not so powerful as some outside analysts imagine. So I feel puzzled: How could China challenge the US leadership? Is it a strategy for American politicians to achieve national unity and enhance its legitimacy? If it is the case, the implication is dangerous. No country can be perfect. No country can maintain its primacy forever. In case some day the US lags behind other countries in more fields, how could the American people fit into the new environment? How could the US government legitimize itself then? So, we must keep vigilant: Who is fabricating “China threat”? And why?

(BI Yantao is President of World Society for Strategic Communication, and Director for Center for Communication Studies, Hainan University, China.)

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8382093-real-threats-to-chinaus-relations

After two decades of frenetic building activity, people are starting to wonder when, and whether, all of that concrete and glass is going to be put to real use. And there is more than just talk and whispers going on here. There are plenty of numbers to back up the speculation. Much of the 10% per year growth that China has seen is directed into cement and girder – some 25% in 2009. That same year saw growth in residential property prices of 50% in Beijing, and 60% in Shanghai.

It now takes an average Chinese worker 18 years to pay for their average abode in Shenzen, and 22 years in Beijing. That compares to less than 8 years in the US. So the fact that property prices are running fast is beyond dispute. The question on the lips of everyone, from foreign investors to Chinese government officials is less “Is there a bubble”,  and more, “When will it burst?” Unless it can be gently deflated, and China’s growth shifted to a more balanced pattern in the process. That’s what the government hope.

The Chinese government has shown it takes the possibility of a burst property bubble very seriously. A number of measure to cool down the feverish market have been taken over the last year. They’ve raised the minimum down-payment on second homes to 60%, interest rates have been gently nudged higher, and non-Chinese are more restricted from buying property than they were. Mortgage discounts for first-time buyers were removed, and estate sales taxes introduced.

Officials have even announced a massive 1.3 trillion yuan scheme to build ten million cheap apartments for low paid workers, who have found the recent price hikes making accommodation unaffordable for them. The government lays the blame on speculators pushing prices up unnecessarily, whilst quietly ignoring their own contribution to blowing up the bubble. And the fact that the government is building millions of apartments, even as there are strong suspicions of millions of flats left vacant in ghost cities, shows something is badly disconnected with the property market.

All actions of the actions taken so far can be seen as those of a nervous government. The Communist leadership knows that, with so much of the its ‘growth miracle’, and the Chinese citizen’s sense of financial well-being, tied up in property, a crash would hurt a lot of people. And a lot of unhappy people is not something the Chinese government is keen to see on their streets right now.

Their measures do appear to be having some effect. In those places with new property taxes, Chongqing and Shanghai, prices rose 0.4 percent and 0.9 percent respectively in the last month. That’s still fast, but a slower rate than last year. Beijing saw price rises slow too, at 0.4 percent, with an annual rate of growth down to a more reasonable 6.8 percent. So does this indicate that China can assure a soft landing, from the property speculation leap of the last couple of years?

Maybe. But the problem isn’t so much with the fundamentals of the market. It’s in the psychology of the market at many different levels. Many of those who’ve bought property see it as a rock-solid investment for the future – mainly because there are so few other outlets to place rising incomes into.

Then there are local governments, who have seen land taxes from development and property deals as a fabulous source of revenue for them. That makes them want to squeeze every last drop out of the market. And even manufacturing concerns and government enterprises have jumped onto the property bandwagon – they have real-estate divisions that they now see as major sources for printing money.

In short, the property bug has bitten deeply into the Chinese psyche – and a market that is relying on a ‘state-of-mind’ to keep it going can reverse very quickly. The popping of China’s property bubble may reverberate very loudly around the world indeed.

Edward Khoo is a Malaysian Chinese who is proud of his language and based in one of the exotic and tropical islands of Malaysia.

Cheonan sinking in South Korea – Grade A- I thought China was very skillful in this issue. The world was waiting for China to point a finger North Korea for the blame and they did not get it because China simply did nothing. However, China overreacted when South Korea and the US have war games near China’s capital. They should’ve said that China was no part of the Cheonan Sinking and ‘Gunship diplomacy’ is not welcome.

Iran – Grade A China had an wait and see/do nothing in this issue. When US and other Western Nations cut their economic ties with Iran, China simply shrugged the issue and gained a valuable trading partner.

Taiwan Issue – Grade A+ Things couldn’t been better for China. China was able to stall the 6.4 billion arms sale. China and Taiwan signed the ECFA while putting the DPP in the backburner. They also scored sided with Taiwan on the Daioyu Islands issue as a bonus.

Yuan appreciation/export issue – Grade C Let’s face it, Timothy Geithner’s repeated calls for China to appreciate the Yuan was ferocious and relentless. So doing nothing and harking Yuan is not the problem simply won’t cut it. Refer the US that when China appreciated its Yuan during 2005-6 by 20% it did not return jobs back to US, in fact trade deficit increased during that time. Also mention that it is hard for Chinese companies to invest in the US which would otherwise create jobs in the USA. And complain about the banned exports to China that is not military related.

ASEAN/Spatry Island issue – Grade B- The writings is on the wall when the US took its eyes off the ball from Southeast Asia during the Bush presidency and China was able to take advantage of that. The Obama presidency stopped all that. China’s general went bonkers to say that the Spatry Islands was a ‘core issue’ to China. As a result, the US was able to court the other ASEAN countries pressed for multilateral interests for ‘securing’ trading routes in the South China sea. China should’ve been more proactive than reactive in this issue.

Diaoyu Island dispute – Grade A- China was instrumental in raising nationalistic sentiments in order to get its citizens saying the detention was ‘illegal.’ They get extra brownie points when they made repeated calls to the Japanese foreign minster to China and while claiming that Daioyu Islands was always part of China. However, Japan claimed that China stopped exporting rare earth metals to them. Perhaps China should do just raise the price of rare earth metals citing environmental cost to clean up while mining for these precious metals.

Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize – Grade F Making threats to the Norwegian government, cutting off ties and making Angry statements is a big no no. Many people thinks that Nobel peace is ‘noble’ and this prize is against China’s progress of ‘democracy and freedom.’ My motto is if you can’t kill the message, kill the messenger. Vilify Liu Xiaobo as a writer to show him about his radical views against China and show that he has no interests in ‘Freedoms’ within China. Don’t forget to mention his extensive rapsheet.

So here goes the news again: Public Enemy Number One in China, Liu Xiao Bo, has been awarded the Nobel Prize!  Not sure where that infamous title of Liu came from.  But this latest Nobel prize must be giving people in the U.S. quite a laugh.

The award of a Nobel to Liu is certainly controversial. Allegedly, the Nobel committee itself was internally divided. But given Liu’s high profile conviction last year, this decision is not totally unexpected. I originally did not plan to write about Liu. However, given the renewed and widespread interest of Liu’s Nobel, I have decided to wade in my thoughts. Here is a translation of what a typical report in the West is like.

For people who are against the Chinese government, the award of Liu’s Nobel is great news. The Nobel not only represents a great boost to the morale of human rights activists around the world, but also brought shame to the Chinese Communist Party. Unfortunately, judging by the Chinese government’s strong adverse response, few expects there to be any political change anytime soon.

The Chinese government has decided to censor news of Liu’s winning of the Nobel. During the middle of routine broadcast programs of CNN and BCC programs, the screen went blank. Few uninitiated were thus able to learn about Liu’s prize.

The recognition and respect given by the Nobel to Liu has hit a sore spot in the Chinese government. First it was the Dalai Lama, now it is Liu. The Nobel has given both international recognition and prestige. For the Chinese government, it has created another diplomatic embarrassment and headache.

While censorship will not be successful in preventing people from learning about Liu, many people in China today don’t know about Liu. Who is this successor of President Obama – the previous Nobel Peace Laureate? Censorship may push discussion of Liu from the public spotlight, but it will not prevent people from discussing the truth of what Liu has revealed.

The prize has now boosted the morale of the signatories of Charter 08 – now probably numbering some ten thousand – but also lawyers fighting for justice and rule of law, and environmentalists throughout China.

The government has responded fiercely in opposition of the award. According to the government, Liu has broken the law and has been sentenced to prison by a court of law. To award the prize to such a person is totally against the principle of the Nobel. The award will stain the prize itself for a long time to come.

The Chinese Communist Party will fight hard to persevere

The recognition given to Liu should send to Chinese Communist Party a strong signal. The truth is obscenely clear: China is still a weak and backward country. It does not even observe Universal Human Rights.

Despite promises upon promises that political reforms will follow economic reforms, the party officials continue to take the position that basic principles of democratic elections, the independence of the judiciary, and freedom of speech are not fit for China.

The only reforms allowed are limited to reforms within the party, reforms that consolidate party power: fewer corruption, fewer government interferences, more efficiency.

For many human rights activists throughout the world and in China, last Friday was a rare day of celebration. Of course, no one dared to hope that change would arrive soon. After all, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest in Myanmar. The Dalai Lama remains exiled, unable to bring about any change for his Tibet.

Chinese leaders Hu and Wen have strongly objected to the Prize. They would predictably point to China’s growth, stability, and lifting of millions out of poverty – yet they have let a rights fighter like Liu sit in jail.

Alas, the prize may have come too late. The government has already dug in and is entrenched in upholding Liu’s excessive sentence. The travesty has little to do with what Liu did, but the excessive sentence he has to serve.

Ultimately the above perspective is to be expected. With their economies still in doldrums, many European nations have come to eye recent Chinese economic growth with jealousy. And the prize provides them an opportunity for self congratulations. China is a weak and backward country. They don’t respect human rights. When Westerners look at China today, their perspective begins with 19th century. First  by guns and violence, later waving the flag of human rights, Westerners seem to want to suppress China at all costs. For them, it is not relevant whether Chinese people improve the circumstances that surround their daily livelihood. It is not important whether people are lifted out of poverty. Their ideological position seen to be torn from an anachronistic page from the cold war; even I, as someone who is typically critical of the government, feel manipulated and abused. Whether such attitudes stem from genuine misunderstandings or calculated conniving is hard to say. In the same breath, they light a fire to Chinese people’s genuine yearning for reform and douse it by calling Chinese people as “backward” and “brainwashed.” They pursue realist, zero-sum, geopolitical games under the empty rhetoric of “freedom” and “human rights.”

I believe most Chinese people in their heart understand what China has gone through to be where it is today. Westerners (including even many Chinese) have forgotten that China used to represent for the world a beacon of light – of a just, enlightened, harmonious power from the 16th – 18th century. But from the 19th century forward, with guns, steel, and cannons, Westerners soon came to regard China as backward. In the new game, it does not matter what China stands for. As long as China does not submit to the West, the West will never acknowledge China.

But what does China stand for? In the economic sphere, there is shallow capitalism. Politically, there is communism? You must be kidding. Communism as practiced today is already captured by special economic interest groups. The Chinese government has become the laughing stock of the world. The fact that it wields so little influence on the international stage is a direct result of its corrupted shying away from taking substantive political reforms. It knows only of censorship and control. It is so weak that it cannot take on simplistic and false ideologies such as “freedom.” It cannot taken on even second rate intellectuals such as Liu Xiao Bo. It must hide behind vague notions of stability and harmony. It concedes notions of “Civil Liberties” and “Universal Values” to be defined in terms of Western notions of “freedom” and “liberty.” Isn’t true universal right a government that can provide for the people? Chinese political and philosophical thought has a long and enlightened history. It complements Western political thoughts well. Yet today’s politicians have botched things up. They have forgotten that politicians are supposed to be just, enlightened, and compassionate. They are supposed to serve the people. How can our leaders talk about justice, virtue, and compassion when they are neither just, virtuous, nor compassionate?

There is no denying that the Nobel for Liu has hit a raw nerve for the government. But the prize hurts not because of Liu’s empty call for “freedom” or “human rights,” but because of the dilapidated state and impotence of Chinese political thought in this early period of the 21st century. Our dilapidation can be seen everywhere: from our taking anti-Chinese writings on facebook and youtube as basic political teaching materials, to our artists relying on movies such as those about Yi He Yuan to capture their imagination of the Chinese Renaissance, to our artists finding expressions only through one dimensional vocabularies of passion and oppression, to our college students and farmers relying on  money to assess their self worth, to our local officials and police making their careers at the expense of ordinary people, to the media outdoing each other in a relentless pursuit of sensationalism and mind-numbing entertainment. Our dilapidated state is the real indictment against our current state of affairs.

True enlightenment and political wisdom can be found in our bookstores, our libraries, the great human traditions from all around the world. But from our leaders to the most ordinary of our citizens, no one appears to care about these things in their daily life. This is the great travesty of Chinese society as revealed by Liu’s Nobel prize.

]]> http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2010/10/13/liu-xiao-bo-nobel-prize-travesty/feed/ 21 http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2010/10/12/china-and-japan-leaders-to-try-to-improve-ties/ http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2010/10/12/china-and-japan-leaders-to-try-to-improve-ties/#comments Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:48:36 +0000 guest http://blog.foolsmountain.com/?p=7797 It’s a new month since the fiasco of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Japanese PM Naoto Kan have met to mend recently frayed diplomatic ties. That a centuries’ old enmity will be healed is unlikely if not unfeasible, but both diplomats have agreed to improve relations, “to resume exploring ties,” said Japanese spokesperson Noriyuki Shikita.

A Recap on the Islands Debate

Last month, a Chinese trawler collided with Japanese patrol vessels near the islands. The Chinese crew was arrested and, later, released, but not before sparking both Chinese and small patches of Japanese outrage.

The islands in question are known by Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands and by the Japanese as Senkaku Islands. Japan claims that in the 19th century, it surveyed the islands for a decade and declared them uninhabited. In January of 1895, they incorporated the islands into Japanese territory; these claims as well as claims to Taiwan were rescinded after defeat in WWII in the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco. Under the same treaty, however, the islands were returned to Japan in 1971 under the Okinawa reversion deal.

Meanwhile, China claims the islands historically as important fishing grounds administered by provincial Taiwan, which was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. China claims that the 1951 treaty should have seen the islands returned, along with Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek—Kuomintang leader—did not speak up, however, even after the Japanese renamed the islands after the reversion deal. It has been agreed that this was for diplomatic purposes as the Chinese depended on US support.

Also meanwhile, Taiwan’s ballot remains in the box as claiming the islands.

Quite objectively, this is a lovely can of worms.

A Brief History of Conflict

The September trawler occurrence is not the only one. In 1996, protesters against the construction of a lighthouse on one of the islands by the Japanese sailed there; David Chan from Hong Kong leapt into the sea and drowned. In 2004, seven Chinese activists who set foot on the main island were arrested by Japanese authorities. One year later, 50 Taiwanese fishing boats protested and claimed harassment by Japanese patrol boats. Tensions have, despite both governments wishing to “shelve” the issue for “future settlement” (according to BBC), have been running high.

China’s interests in the islands are obvious to many as being more than sentimental. The islands are close to shipping lanes. Gas and oil fields on the islands have been disputed over since the 1970s. Diplomatic relations have been shaky for reasons other than economic and trade-related disputes, but China’s cancellation of a visit by one-thousand Japanese students to Shanghai and a concert by a Japanese band certainly didn’t help, and Japan’s unwise seizure of the trawler crew was a short-sighted decision for which diplomacy will pay. At least a diplomatic apology might have been exchanged, but polls show that some conservative Japanese are already upset by what they see as a diplomatic defeat. A statement released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that “China calling for apology or compensation is groundless and is absolutely not acceptable.”

The 1997 Fisheries Agreement

The Japan-China fisheries agreement designated territories for fishing for both nations, but the seas around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands was left unregulated and welcomed fishing boats from both nations. An intriguing article by Tanaka Sakai (found here: http://www.fpif.org/articles/rekindling_china-japan_conflict) reveals, however, that the region lies outside the agreement entirely. That Japan is choosing to anger China—something previous seats in government chose to refrain from doing explicitly on both sides of the table—is a new development.

Prime Minister Wen last month refused to meet Kan at the recent United Nations summit. Higher hopes were set for the talks at the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday but the two appeared to avoid each other, according to BBC. Both parties, however, had a chance encounter in a corridor after the formal talks had closed and agreed that this sibling rivalry was undesirable. Moreover, both agreed to hold regular “high-level talks.”

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently
a resident blogger at First in Education performing research surrounding online universities and their various program offerings. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

If China is leaving the “world factory” model, economy is not necessarily the only driver of this change. There are other factors at play, for instance, the family planning policy.

Recently I called my youngest sister, who worked in Kunshan, a prosperous industrial city near Shanghai, and we chatted about the job situation there. She said factory jobs are easy to get these days. I asked why that is the case. She said most potential workers are single children in the family. “If you were their parents, wouldn’t you want your only child to go to college and get a better job?”

I guess I would.

At the same time, there is a shortage of jobs for recent college graduates. In a meeting with college students in 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao made job creation for young college graduates a national priority, as having a job is a way to give a young person “dignity”. Job scarcity can also threaten social stability which the current Chinese administration try hard to maintain. Indeed, as shown in many regions in the world, it is a recipe for disaster to have too many young people and too few opportunities.

The lack of workers for factories, and the lack of jobs for college graduates, though seemingly unrelated, are actually both direct results of decades of the “family planning” policy. It is probably made worse by a tendency to adopt the US model of economic development that emphasizes knowledge sector jobs rather than industrial jobs. (John Taylor Gatto said in Weapons of Mass Instruction that people used to make steel, now they make bubbles, Internet bubbles, financial bubbles, to name a few.)

This year, quite a number of scholars in China are urging a revision or even revocation of the “one-child” policy. The start of this policy was fundamentally a mistake used to correct another mistake, a U-turn from a rock towards a ditch. Before the policy was instituted, there was a time when it was a virtue and contribution to the country to have many children. Chairman Mao said that “the larger the population, the greater the strength”, therefore he largely encouraged families to have more children, though there were times when he had second thoughts about the issue. Mao persecuted Professor Ma Yanchu, a prominent sociologist and Beijing University President who advocated population control. Ma left his position, burned his manuscripts, and disappeared from public attention.

Is China’s population control a total mistake? The problem is so complex that it defies criticism from a single perspective. First of all, “family planning” is not a Chinese invention, and it is a pretty good theory. In other countries, one would also need to prepare for the number of children to have, and the social, economical, psychological and even physical arrangements to make so that it is possible to raise your children in a fairly decent environment. However, a “one-child policy” is an extreme to go to.

It is not difficult to understand why there is population issue. Currently, China has 1.4 billion people in a land similar in size to the United States, which has 300 million people. Though this presents many opportunities, it also has a huge pressure on the country. Such pressure can be easily felt if you hop on to a bus in Beijing, or a subway train in Shanghai, if you can get on at all.

There is little people can do to reduce the pressure. Though we often have the illusion that there is a global village, migration in a “flat world” is not as easy as a few best-selling authors claim. Basically this means that the land of China will have to support its own population no matter how large it is. Legend has it that a western politician once criticized China’s population policy in front of Deng Xiaoping, then leader of China, Deng retorted by asking if he is willing to accept ten million Chinese as immigrants. That hushed the politician. As a matter of fact, if anybody has an issue remembering which countries have the largest population, and why this is a problem, simply check United States immigration services’ monthly visa bulletin, and there you will see India and China often being the only countries with a backlog in the bewildering quota system that govern USCIS decisions. Few countries would like to fully open its doors to the Chinese.

The overpopulation issue, however, should never justify the one-child policy as an intervention. In the name of family planning, atrocities such as forced abortion and sterilization were common. If anyone holding public office has more than one child, he or she may immediately lose the job, and receive a huge fine that are often several times a person’s annual salary. The fine is often called “social care-taking fee”, though a child may growing up knowing no other caretaker than his or her parents, instead of an abstract “society”.

After 30 years of the family planning policy, what would happen if the policy is abolished? Would people have more children than one? In present-day China, many young people, especially those born in the 80s, call themselves “apartment slaves”, “child slaves” to describe the heavy pressure they have to shoulder. After talking with friends and classmates back home, I realized that many people wouldn’t want to have more than one child even if they are allowed to. As a matter of fact, there is quite a bit of flexibility about this policy and people can often make exceptions for themselves especially in recent years when the public is casting doubts about family planning as a basic national policy. For instance, in rural China, it is possible to have another child if the firstborn is not a son. Also, in the cities, if both parents are single children in their respective families, they are allowed to have a second child. However, many choose not to take advantage of this “privilege.” It is getting prohibitively expensive to raise a child. I guess we’ve got a giant panda situation here. Sooner or later there will be a “tipping point” when the population will decrease and increasing it would be a tough challenge.

Elsewhere in the world, there are similar reservations among Chinese for having more children. I recently read a book (The Population Crash) that says Chinese women on average have far less children than other peoples. In Singapore, where there isn’t a one-child policy, Chinese women on average have 1.1 children, much less than other peoples in Singapore. In the Chinese communities in the US, having two children were common, but parents having more than three children will often wow a fellow Chinese. I do not know how to understand this phenomenon except a wild guess at the collective sub-consciousness of us Chinese from years of propaganda all over the world that having more Chinese increases the burden on the planet, even though generally most Chinese are hard-working, self-reliant, and rarely depending on the social welfare systems.

At this point, the policy will indeed need to be revisited. Economically, an aging population is not going to do China much good in the long run. China may seem prosperous, but not many people are taking the GDP growth seriously any more, unless the national wealth can be fairly distributed through equal access to opportunities for the country’s 1.4 billion people. Compared to the powerful few, most people are still living in relative poverty. The nation risks “getting old before it gets rich”, as a popular saying goes nowadays. Economically, the lack of younger people for factory jobs is forcing China to re-consider its “world factory” model of development. Only a few years ago, cheap labor is everywhere. As single children become the main pool of the labor force, it is easier to find someone to make the next bubbles.

Socially, when generations of single children grow up, they will be forced to live in a 4-2-1 family structure (four grandparents, parents and the child). If the social welfare system does not upgrade to accommodate such changes, it is going to cause huge stress for the child to support all the parents and the grandparents. Traditionally many Chinese parents were supported by their children. That’s simply not sustainable any more.

The lack of siblings of course conveniently rid the society of sibling rivalry issues that drive parents crazy (Remember “It’s not fair”! “He started it.” “Why me?”…. ), but that may be as much a curse as it is a blessing. Kids may grow up not knowing how to resolve conflicts, solve problems in spite of differences, and build relations with a fellow human being of his or her similar age. That’s not doing future marriages much favor.

The silver lining of that cloud is that this generation of single children are more assertive and more confident than their parents’ generation. After all, these little “princes and princesses” do not grow up having to make compromises.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/opinion/18sat1.html?ref=editorials

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/weekinreview/19chan.html?ref=world

Yes it is true that there’s a really high trade deficit from US to China. However, it is easy to point to China as the scapegoat in an election year to point the problem on others. However, does currency re-evaluation would fix the problem? According to history, no. Remember the plaza accords when US complained to Japan about their trade deficit problems? After Japan ‘re-evaulated’ its currency to the US, the trade deficit was not eliminated. In 1986, trade deficit was 55 billion, 1987-56 billion, 1988 51 billion, 1989 49 billion, 1991 41 billion, 1992 49 billion, 1993 59 billion, 1994 65 billion. While trade deficit did decrease in the short term, but was increased in the long term. Talking about currency re-evaluation, China changed its currency from around $1 = $8 rmb, to $6.8 rmb. Did trade went down? No.

The problem with trade deficit in US should not solely blamed on China, rather the problem lies in US companies abroad. Would starting a trade war with China by putting up tariffs an answer? No, other countries would simply pick up the trade surpluses that China once have. Take the clothes export business for example. Made in China exports from Textiles was 70% of its imports in 2005. After the RMB evaluation in 2006, imports from Chinese textiles dropped to around 40% in 2009. However, many other countries like India, Vietnam and Bangladesh picked up what China left off. You barely see the jobs in the textile industry came back to the US.

Other countries like Japan and Germany have trade surpluses despite being a developed country. US can follow their example but corporate interests simply won’t allow it. Creating jobs here means telling many of the Multinationals not to export our jobs and forcing them back to creating the factories here and allow the US middle class to have a decent wage.

Dr. Lin believes that if humorists come together in world conferences discussing serious issues confronting the world, wars could be avoided. Here is an optimistic picture he presents for us: “You will find George Bernard Shaw shouting that Ireland is wrong, and a Berlin cartoonist protesting that the mistake is all theirs, and Heywood Broun claiming the largest share of bungling for America, while Stephen Leacock in the chair makes a general apology for mankind, gently reminding us that in the matter of stupidity and sheer foolishness no nation can claim itself to be the superior of others. How in the name of humor are we going to start a war under these conditions?”

Dr. Lin’s conclusion may be too simple and too naïve, therefore it should be appreciated mainly as humor rather than a real political proposal, otherwise voters of nations should choose circus masters to run countries. I think Mao and Stalin both have a wicked sense of humor, but what difference does it make? I think one of the hidden assumptions of Dr. Lin Yutang is that people appreciate and understand each other’s humor. I don’t think that is always the case.

I was recently contacted by a web site to write an article for some translations of Scott Adam’s Dilbert books in China. Instead of one, I gave her three articles, one called “Dilbert Coming to Work in China,” another “Dilbert Laid off in China”, and a third piece a dialogue between Dilbert and myself on why he left China.

What happened was that in 2006, I was asked to translate Dilbert Cartoons into Chinese for the Chinese website of the London-based Financial Times. 200 cartoons later, the editor told me that they would not run any more of the cartoons. I was told that the reason was that Scott Adam’s agency charged them too much for royalties. However that was a time when Financial Times’ Chinese web site was starting to become rather well known in China, attracting a lot of advertisers. I don’t think that financial pressure is the real reason. The cartoons probably failed to capture the hearts of Chinese readers as much as they do the Americans. If they really had attracted Chinese readers, I am sure the site would have done whatever they can to invest in it. So, about two hundred cartoons after I wrote the preface “Dilbert Coming to Work in China”, I wrote “Dilbert Laid Off”. And I moved on to the translation of serious novels, and my sense of humor was also gone.

E. B. White once said: “analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” So instead of rationalizing about the reasons that led to Dilbert’s lukewarm reception in China, I created a dialogue with Dilbert in which I explained to Dilbert that the difficulty for the Chinese to appreciate his humor is the differences in cultural backgrounds. For instance, one of the cartoons obviously has a reference to the “yellow brick road” from Wizard of Oz. I doubt that the average Chinese readers know much about Wizard of Oz, let alone the reference to a particular detail in the book. In the beginning of my translation, I resorted to the use of footnote to explain where these references are from and what they meant. That was a pretty dumb idea. Next time I would rather put a footnote on my T-shirt, than putting it at the end of a cartoon. The annotation simply causes the abruptness, incongruity, and wit in a joke to be gone. Humor works likes a waterfall. There has to be a flow of thought that was suddenly interrupted by a free fall or quick turn into another direction. If you annotate, you messed up the flow and it was no longer funny any more.

Also, I found that there are Chinese bloggers and publishers who interpret Dilbert too seriously, trying to promote Dilbert cartoons as a way to achieve professional success. For instance, what kind of pitfalls to watch for in the cubicle, how do you deal with insane-chicks kind of colleagues, how do you manage Asok kind of interns, how do you respond to Catbert the evil Human Resource guy, etc. Though there were also people who did this in the US, but mostly I think Dilbert cartoons are meant to be ironic. There is a lot of playful curiosity and light-hearted satire about office politics. If one takes these more serious than they were intended, then it is difficult to appreciate the humor in them.

Also, I received some comments from readers that Dilbert cartoons are too “cold” for them. I am wondering what “hot” humor is like. Today I read a collection of Chinese ancient jokes to see what is the nature of our humor. Most of them have to do with word plays, stupidity, sex, politics, and also I found there are also many jokes about hen-pecked husbands (which dominate Chinese Central TV’s short comedies). So far, I don’t see how different these are from American humor. But there are differences. There are more jokes from ancient China related to scholars such as Su Dongpo,and Ji Xiaonan. I don’t find as many jokes about Emerson or Chomsky. I also found that we Chinese were traditionally good at pranks. I always thought that fortune cookie is one of the best pranks in history, for if you go to China you won’t find any.

In America, I noticed that Americans use some rhetorical devices that are less common to the Chinese readers, especially irony and understatement. But here I risk dissecting that poor frog again.

Now, obviously, Dibert is coming to China again after four years, during which we have had the Olympics and the World Expo, events that must have increased interaction between Chinese and other peoples. If such exposure does not change people more fundamentally, I hope it helps Chinese and Americans and other peoples to become more relaxed towards each other – no matter what is happening between Hu and Obama– and can now both enjoy a good Dilbert cartoon. I wish Dilbert better luck this time.

It is clear that except medicine is their life expectancy affected by many other factors.

If we consider the negative impact of today’s polluted environment why the Chinese did not live longer in pre-industrial era?
“Because they were poor and hard working.”

So let have a look at the longevity of those who
- were not poor, can afford the best food, doctors and drugs
- (according to advertisement) they were mad about chi-kung
- (according to the net-shop with no real address) followed feng-shui rules.
Let’s have a look at the longevity of Chinese emperors.

It is clear that this sample is not statistically significant and one dynasty are members of the same family may be affected by some negative effects.

In some cases could be real age lower than referred because sometimes was my calculation based on the difference in years only, ignoring the months. Reports about calculation errors are welcomed.

From the long list on Wikipedia I deal with selected dynasties only – also because from the time before 2800 years ago we have no reliable information. Unfortunately, even later it is not always clear – will see.

Consciously I focused on Han dynasties only, ignoring Manju (Qing) and Mongol (Yuan), which had a little bit different background.

Last ethnically Han dynasty was Ming (1368-1644), in other words family Zhu. Its rulers lived following time:
1st 1328 to 1398 = 69 years
2nd 1377 to 1402 = 24
3rd 1360 to 1424 = 64
4th 1378 to 1425 = 46
5th 1398 to 1435 = 36
6th 1427 to 1464 = 36
7th 1428 to 1457 = 28
8th 1447 to 1487 = 39
9th 1470 to 1505 = 34
10th 1491 to 1521 = 29
11th 1507 to 1567 = 59
12th 1537 to 1572 = 25
13th 1563 to 1620 = 56
14th 1582 to 1620 = 38
15th 1605 to 1627 = 21
16th 1611 to 1644 = 33
So from today’s perspective not much. Longest life had dynasty founder who became king nearly forty years old.

It could be useful to filter out those who died prematurely from non-medical reasons. For example, the second one was overthrown by the third and probably killed in the fight, seventh overthrew sixth but he returned it to him and last one committed suicide when the next dynasty was pushing itself into the palace.
But even kicking whichever we can’t reach today’s average life expectancy.

So at least let’s write what can be easily found about their death on Wikipedia:
1st 1328 to 1398 = 69
2nd 1377 to 1402 = 24 killed?
3rd 1360 to 1424 = 64
4th 1378 to 1425 = 46 heart attack
5th 1398 to 1435 = 36 (unspecified) disease
6th 1427 to 1464 = 36
7th 1428 to 1457 = 28 killed
8th 1447 to 1487 = 39
9th 1470 to 1505 = 34 (the doctors after his death executed)
10th 1491 to 1521 = 29 diseases
11th 1507 to 1567 = 59 poisoning (doctors after his death executed) #1
12th 1537 to 1572 = 25
13th 1563 to 1620 = 56 #2
14th 1582 to 1620 = 38 disease
15th 1605 to 1627 = 21
16th 1611 to 1644 = 33 suicide

From the famous Ming we’re moving to the golden age of Tang Dynasty (618-907, Li family).
The first period (until the interruption in 690-705) is no win again:
1st 566 to 635 = 69 disease
2nd 599 to 649 = 50 disease or poisoning #1
3rd 628 to 683 = 55 disease
4th 656 to 710 = 53 poisoning
5th 662 to 716 = 54 (dying after four years of retirement)

Later Tang has finally one who lived more than 70 years:
6th 695 or 698 to 714 = 19 or 23
7th 685 to 762 = 76 glory to him!
8th 711 to 762 = 51
9th 727 to 779 = 52 heart attack
10th 742 to 805 = 62 disease
11th 761 to 806 = 45
12th 778 to 820 = 42 murder
13th 795 to 824 = 29 disease
14th 809 to 827 = 17 murder
15th 809 to 840 = 31 disease
16th 814 to 846 = 31 poisoning #1
17th 810 to 859 = 49 poisoning #1
18th 833 to 873 = 39 disease
19th 862 to 888 = 27 accident
20th 867 to 904 = 37 murder
21st 892 to 908 = 17 poisoning

Han Dynasty (Han, 206 BC-9 AD, Liu family):
1st -256 (256 BC) or -247 to 195 = 52 or 61
2nd -210 to -188 = 22 disease
3rd -?? to -184 =? murder
4th -?? to -180 =? execution
5th -202 to -157 = 45
6th -188 to -141 = 47
7th -156 to -87 = 69 disease
8th -94 to -74 = 20
9th -? to -59 = ?
10th -91 to -49 = 42
11th -75 to -33 = 42
12th -51 to 44 -7 = heart attack #3
13th -27 And -1 = 26
14th -9 to 6 = 13? poisoning
15th 5 to 25 = 20 murder
16th ? to 25 =? murder
17th -5 to 57 = 61
18th 28 to 75 = 47
19th 57 to 88 = 31
20th 79 to 105 = 26
21st 105 to 106 = 1
22nd 94 to 125 = 32 murder?
23rd ? to ? = ?
24th 115 to 144 = 29/30 disease
25th 143 to 145 = 2
26th 138 to 146 = 8 poisoning
27th 132 to 168 = 36
28th 156 to 189 = 34 disease
29th 173 or 176 to 190 = 14 or 17 poisoning
30th 181 to 234 = 53 (abdicated)

Part of Qin dynasty (221 BC-207 BC, Ying family), specifically the section which is considered (pan-)Chinese:
1st -259 to -210 = 49 poisoning #1
2nd -229 to -207 = 22 suicide
3rd -?? to -206 =? murder

A small part of the Zhou dynasty (1046 BC-256 BC, Ji family), after -841 (later Zhou), which is for our purposes documented enough:
11th -841 to -781 = 60
12th -795 to -771 = 24 murder
13th -771 to -720 = 51

You may have noticed # in some lines.

#1 means (almost voluntary) poisoning by elixir of immortality, typically containing mercury. The miracle used to be prescribed by alchemist and used more times – until death. At least unifier of China, our number one of Qin Dynasty, ended due to mercury as a paranoiac, what because of its power had disastrous effects on its surroundings. Administration of toxic mercury was based on Taoist classical-medicine tradition, which recognizes the transition from food, drugs (ordinary food is medicine already) to poisons. The more powerful drug – the more strong poison. Till now has Chinese medicine own standards for mercury content.

For #2, even he has not named reason of death, but half a century ago scientists found in its body marks of abundant use of opium. Unclear whether because of whim or for pain relief.

#3 has indicated that he died of a heart attack, noting that it was probably the effect of potency-increasing medicament. It is possible that more of the emperor’s death had the same reason.

So I said to myself that if cause of premature death could be harem, it would be interesting to compare the Chinese emperors with the Turkish sultans. List of sultans was unexpectedly long and sometimes ambiguous, so there is only the beginning:
1st 1258 to 1326 = 68 (or 1258 to 1324 = 64 Wikipedia gives different numbers at the beginning and end of the article)
2nd 1281 to 1361 = 80 (or 1284 to 1359 = 75)
3rd 1326 to 1389 = 63 (or 1319 to 1389 = 70) Battle of Kosovo
4th 1360 to 1403 = 43 (or 1354 to 1403 = 47/48), suicide in captivity
5th 1382 to 1421 = 39
6th 1404 to 1451 = 47 disease
7th 1432 to 1481 = 49 poisoned?
Moreover, I admit, I did not even started to search when Ottoman tradition of harems started.

I tried it from the other end. Tibetan Dalai Lamas make it clear that be without harem does not automatically mean to have a long life:
1st 1391 to 1474 = 83
2nd 1475 to 1542 = 67
3rd 1543 to 1588 = 45
4th 1589 to 1617 = 28 poisoning?
5th 1617 to 1682 = 65
6th 1683 to 1706? = 23?
7th 1708 to 1757 = 49
8th 1758 to 1804 = 46
9th 1805 to 1815 = 10
10th 1816 to 1837 = 21 overall poor health
11th 1838 to 1856 = 18
12th 1857 to 1875 = 18 disease
13th 1876 to 1933 = 57
14th 1935 to ? = at least 75

As a short European bonus first Roman emperors (so-called Julio-Claudian dynasty, 27 BC-68 AD):
1st -63 to 14 = 75
2nd -42 to 37 = 77
3rd 12 to 41 = 28 killed
4th -10 to 54 = 63 killed
5th 37 to 68 = 30 suicide

Let’s have a look at some spiritual leaders of China.
Lao-C ‘is a vague, but Confucius (-551 to -479 = 71/72) and his followers Mencius (-732 to -289 = 83) and Xun Xi (-313 to -238 = 75) lived quite a long time.

Great Helmsman (1893-1976) lived nice 82 years.
Mentioning him I recall to myself nearly twenty-year-old ad in one of European magazines. It offered Asian miracle product to restore the hair fleece with the slogan “Do you know any bald Chinese?”. Who does not.
God knows which one emperors were using.

Adopted and translated from cina.exil.sk, author Tibor Blazko.

In fact my father had been a devout Christian in his youth, and had at one time even considered the priesthood as a career. Later he abandoned Christianity, as so many intellectuals do, because of the problem of evil.

Indeed, the presence of evil, pain and suffering in our world is the most persistent argument raised against Christianity. The argument runs as follows:

1. If God is perfectly loving, He must wish to abolish evil
2. If He is all powerful, He must be able to abolish evil
3. But evil exists. Therefore, an all powerful, loving God does not exist

The conventional Christian response is:

1. God created a world of free will
2. Although God therefore made evil possible, man makes evil actual
3. Eventually God will defeat evil

Nevertheless, although these points about free will and the future have some value, these arguments fail to explain why a loving parent would create (or allow into existence) a Darwinian world, which, in its very essence, is about selfishness, competition and the survival of fittest rather than the most loving. Arguing that evil is the result of man’s free will alone is just not enough, a Darwinian world of flesh eating animals, disease, disability, earthquakes, inequality and heartless competition demands a better explanation.

As Schopenhauer puts it: “A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.”
This horrifying picture is not a consequence of human free will, rather biology, organisms have to kill and eat each other to survive, pain and competition are the very foundation stones of our world – undermining the ‘man makes evil actual’ argument. In fact even the opening statement of the Christian response – ‘God created a world of free will’ – also clearly fails. Does the African child born to starve really have free will in any meaningful sense? Even the lambs we breed for slaughter have more freedom than these unfortunates. Yet how much free will do any of us have? Choose not to breathe and see how long your freedom lasts.

Christianity also says: (1) God is love. (2) God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. (3) Every individual is special and sacred in his own way. Yet these sentiments are clearly completely incompatible with the cold hard realities of human life. God, if he exists, is not attached to individual human life. If God exists, he has clearly brought about an outrageously cruel world in which human life is deeply expendable and inequitable. Does God care when hundreds of thousands die in a Tsunami, or tens of millions die in a War, or hundreds of millions die of AIDS? Clearly not.

Does that mean that every intellectual must therefore be an atheist? No, it simply means that every intellectual must reject Christianity’s description of God. So what alternative theories of God exist?

During The Age Of Enlightenment the philosopher Spinoza described an impersonal God resembling a logical scientific principle rather than a moral principle. Spinoza also rejected the notion of free will as largely illusionary. Albert Einstein said: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” Today we describe Spinoza’s ideas as an example of “Deism” – the philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe and religious truth can determined using reason and observation of the natural world without the need for faith or organized religion. Deism became the religion of choice for Age Of Enlightenment philosophers in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Spinoza was certainly not the first philosopher to conceive of a non-loving God. In fact the idea of both a loving God, and of human free will, do not really exist in Judaism, the religion Christianity grew out of. These two ideas, which have become an integral component of modern Western religion and morality, were largely introduced by the Christians.

Consider the Ancient Greek poet Homer’s cosmology. Homer’s Gods remind us of Nietzschean Übermensch; their divinity revolved around their power, their self confidence, their psychological intensity – in stark contrast to their human subjects, who lived in a state of blandness, blindness and slavery. For Homer free will is something that Gods have, and human do not have.

Today Homer’s cosmology strikes us as both primitive and absurd. Nevertheless, one can see that his system is at least untroubled by the problem of evil. In fact his model fits the horrors of our Darwinian world perfectly, because his divinity revolves around power rather than love.

Pythagoras was a critic of Homer’s cosmology. Although his precise beliefs are shrouded in mystery, we do know that he associated reason with divinity and therefore rejected Homer’s colourful picture of Gods sometimes exhibiting irrational human personality traits. Pythagoras was also an ascetic, he rejected Homer’s frequently violent and lustful Gods, he associated self discipline and intellectual idealism with divinity. Pythagoras also conceived divinity as an ideal unitary consciousness, something infinitely greater than individualised human personality, so he moved from multiple psychological human looking Gods to a single ideal dehumanised God principle. His divine principle was rational, even mathematical, and stood in contrast to the irrationality of mortal men.

This Pythagorean vision of divinity I have described remains untroubled by the problem of evil because his God is not loving and human life is not sacred. Although this vision is far more advanced and that Homer’s, something still feels as if it is missing.

Teleology is the philosophical study of purpose and/or design in nature. Sophisticated descriptions of divinity invariably involve teleological positivism – a reason why, a sense of direction, a purpose. Hegel is the philosopher who famously attempted to integrate teleological positivism into Christianity. Hegel believed that human beings can escape from the painful immediacy of human life by the raising up of their consciousness in religion, and that human history is the story of evolving religious consciousness, consequently releasing mankind from suffering.

Plato and Aristotle not only built on the rational Pythagorean cosmology, they added teleological positivism by spades. Hegel said “Anthropology has for its subject matter the soul in its uncultivated natural condition”. Plato’s equivalent runs: Anthropology has for its subject matter the soul in its unthinking natural condition. Primitive human soul, like that of an animal, acts by instinct without intelligence. The blood soaked earth then becomes the mother of all perfection. In their struggle for survival and mastery, humans develop intelligence. For Hegel the endpoint is the spiritual escape from nature, for Plato, the endpoint is the rational conquest of nature.

For Plato, spiritual growth is the process of opening the mind, of abandoning tradition and dogma, of learning to pragmatically solve life’s challenges. What separates a good carpenter and a bad carpenter? Skill in carpentry. How does this skill relate to dogma? Dogma is in essence the precise opposite of skill, it is an assumption of how carpentry should be done, not the intelligent calculation of optimal execution. Dogma enslaves mankind in ideology, it’s opposites are intelligence and creativity. So Plato said that what distinguishes a spiritually evolved man is his ability to make optimal decisions, coming out of his talent for objective analysis.

Even today Plato’s ideas are radical, indeed very few people have even heard of the idea that spiritual growth is connected with reason. Every religions revolves around love and faith is the common, but utterly misguided, Western refrain. Despite our technological advances, the world is still utterly steeped in ideology, still revels in ideology, still rejects rationality as evil. The idealization of rationality during the Age Of Enlightenment has all but vanished, even amongst the worlds premiere philosphers. Even the smartest 20th Century scientist, Albert Einstein, demonstrated profound irrationality concerning his own area of specialist expertise. Einstein disliked the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, not because the scientific arguments were poor, but because he disliked the idea of God “playing dice with the universe”. What Einstein was doing was projecting an ideological assumption onto nature and refusing to open his mind to contradictory evidence. Yet Einstein was the smartest man in Physics, and Heisenberg uncertainty principle was an area he specialised in – imagine how irrational the masses are! Essentially they are robots, animals, completely devoid of intelligence, complete steeped in ideology, whose only experience of creativity is the production of new life by sexual reproduction.

How does one achieve rationality? Plato encouraged people to question their assumptions, to expose their sacred beliefs and values systems to the cold light of reason. Socrates was the Guru who opened the minds of the blind by questioning subjects, demonstrating their complete irrationality, revealing their ideological programming, tearing apart their ethical assumptions. Christianity teaches the precise opposite, instead of tearing apart sacred assumptions we should have faith in them. So although Plato and Socrates believed in God, they rejected all dogma and all faith, both in religion, in ethics and other areas. How did democratic Athens take to Socrates’ radical advice? By executing him! For those seeped in ideology Plato is the anti-christ.

Under the Platonic model, we can imagine God bringing this terrible world into existence in order to educate the souls who inhabit it. God created this primitive world of Darwinian competition as a school. Like the child who can not understand why his parents would cast him from the loving home into a competitive school, man can not understand why God has created this world to educate him. Also, like the child who lives entirely in the moment and has little concept of time, man can not understand that what he feels is a lifetime is not even a blink of God’s eye. Like the child who does not understand that the bruises he takes will heal, man does not understand that death is an illusion. A perfect world, like a school without hardship, can not educate. One day man will learn to conquer Earth completely, to cure all disease and fashion the planet in any way he pleases. Man will become all powerful, all wise and all virtuous, man will become God. So although the world God initially created is the precise antithesis of divinity, it evolves into divinity.

Plato’s rational and teleological positive cosmology is also untroubled is the problem of evil. Summarizing the differences between the Platonic and Christian models: Instead of detached pragmatic intelligence, we have love, traditionalism and faith. The concept of good & evil reverses: In one case ideology is evil and pragmatism is good, in the other case the precise opposite is true. Instead of a loving shepherd who cares for his sheep, God is infinitely detached from finite humanitarianism and only concerned with evolutionary idealism. Instead of egalitarian Christian utopia, we have evolutionary struggle, we have worms and supermen. Instead of being born into free will, we are born into slavery. Instead of evolving into servitude, we evolve into freedom. Instead of a single lifetime on Earth, there is reincarnation. Death is meaningless, human life is not sacred. The black death was not a tragedy, it was just a moment in man’s evolution. Just as St Matthew’s Passion is a mixture of harmony and discord, plague is an integral part of the celestial music.

Christians will object to the apparent heartlessness of the Platonic model I have described, yet love is not missing if we examine the concept correctly. Picture a mother and a father caring for a child. The nurturing mother cares about her child in the here and now, the more challenging father is concerned with the child’s evolution. The mothers worries when the child hurts himself, the father encourages the child to climb trees and take risks, his motto is “no pain, no gain”. The mother is happiest with the baby, who needs the greatest care. The father prefers the older child, who is ready to begin falling down and hurting himself. Take that masculine principle to the extreme, to infinity, and we end up with Plato’s Divinity. To the feminine viewpoint this ultra masculine viewpoint is completely lacking compassion, so it is pure tyranny, pure evil. But from the masculine perspective, the feminine viewpoint is completely lacking idealism, so it is pure materialism, pure evil.

Confucius spoke of a yin/yang duality underlying all philosophy and psychology. Plato spoke of the Mortal-Immortal duality. The yin/mortal viewpoint is egalitarian and nurturing, the yang/immortal viewpoint is competitive and detached. In other words there are two essentially different ways of seeing God, one is yin, and Christianity is an example; one is yang, and the Platonic model is an example. The two visions are totally opposites, even their concepts of good and evil reverse. No wonder the Western masses seeped in Christianity find the Platonic model shocking, and would rather believe in nothing at all.

Max Muller picked up on this when he described two religious visions, the Aryan and the Semitic. One believes in utopian equality, one in struggling inequality. We have the infamous idea of the Semitic perversion of civilization which runs as follows: Because the exulted viewpoint of Socrates is far beyond the masses, the Jewish Religion taught a single lifetime of passive sufferance followed by eternal utopian bliss in the hereafter (Christianity added nurturing love). As this perversion spread beyond the lower classes, the truth was completely lost to Western Society. The rot goes way beyond the technical details of the Western conception of God, it includes the moral system, the concept of enlightenment, the purpose of life.

The most famous Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi, espoused the same ideas as Plato. He called his enlightening principle “gewu”, which is the “investigation of things”, the “paying attention to books and affairs”, he was also anti-traditionalist, also pragmatic, and he described God as a rational principle. It must be quickly added that one of the reasons people find the concept of ‘rationality’ so offensive is that the word carries excessively linear connotations, what we are really talking about is an objectivity described by Buddhists as “detachment”.

Yet Christianity has its uses, Confucius realized that not every member of society could follow in Socrates’ footsteps, consequently he created two parallel paths, one philosophical and rational, one traditional and moral. Confucius: “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” When reading Confucius, it is vital to keep this in mind, he frequently mixes the two approaches, so in one line he might recommend piety, and in the next radicalism.

If you, the reader, have followed me to this point, you will now understand that there is another conception God, the Eastern Model, which is the polar opposite of Christianity, which is not invalidated by the problem of evil, and which is deeply rational.

In my opinion, China’s economic rise is not unconnected with mankind’s philosophical progress. I believe that we are living though a seminal moment in history, a sort of Age Of Enlightenment Part II. Involved in this is the rise of worthy China, and the decline of the unworthy West. This rotation of power is connected with the rise of a new pragmatic rational conception of God which is the antithesis of Christian theology and morality. During the Age of Enlightenment Western Philosophers, unable to detach from feminized Christian morality, failed to appreciate either the evolutionary or collectivist idealism key to the theological positivism of the Eastern model.
Further Reading: www.theoligarch.com

Today Political Scientists talk about the concept of “government legitimacy”. Defining legitimacy is actually quite difficult, but some of the ideas we tend to associate with it include benevolence, competence and popular support.

In fact, the 20th Century American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset offers by far the most compelling definition of legitimacy:

A government is legitimate if and only if it is generally believed that the government performs at least as well or better than that all conceivable alternatives. Performance here means proven increases in the public good, especially economic growth.  

Notice that the principles of both competence and consent are integral to this definition.

Lipset also describes this notion of legitimacy as the key source of a government’s stability. As a result, the key to a government’s persistence is either the want of a better alternative, or its ability to generate “performance legitimacy”.

Today Lipset’s theory of legitimacy is not just widely admired, it has achieved essentially axiomatic status.

How does democracy relate to Lipset legitimacy? If it is generally believed that voter choice guarantees optimal policy, then democracy achieves a sort of automatic “democratic legitimacy”. However, generally political scientists, including Lipset, do not believe this to be the case. Instead, the persistence of democracy is still believed to revolve around its ability to generate performance legitimacy.

Until very recently, political scientists generally believed that Western Democracy was economically outperforming all other models of government, demonstrating superior performance legitimacy. If this was ever proven widely incorrect, the decline of Western democracy follows axiomatically. For example: Robert Kagan, foreign-policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has said: “We lived under the illusion that economic success required political liberalisation. All the [democratic] optimism of the 1990s rested on this assumption. Now it appears that the causality is less certain… The old struggle, the one that long predated the Cold War, has returned.”

Readers will probably ask themselves “Is democracy really on such shaky grounds? Is ‘performance legitimacy’ really the only factor? Surely there must be more to it, what about morality?” This is where political science and liberal politics diverge; Lipset’s theory does not make moral assumptions and is very focused on economic growth. Even Francis Fukuyama’s rather populist essay “The End Of History” revolved around the economic out performance of democracy, if you reverse that assumption you reverse the argument. Fukuyama did speculate that mankind’s evolution toward democracy on material grounds has accompanied his evolution toward democracy on philosophical grounds. In other words, democracy is the endpoint of mankind’s search for material progress just as it is the endpoint of mankind’s search for justice and virtue. There is something intuitively appealing about this argument, were democracy not to be the ideal system on material grounds, perhaps we would also find it not to be the ideal system on philosophical grounds.

Now that we have equipped ourselves with the concept of legitimacy, we can analyze the Chinese model of government. In fact the Chinese government essentially targets Lipset legitimacy directly. Instead of democracy, China employs policy experts, today generally scientists and engineers, who optimize policy in order to maximize Lipsettian goals such as economic growth. Although realized increases in living standards are the most important factor in Lipset legitimacy, radical unfamiliar policy changes can jeopardize public confidence in government. In order to maintain Lipset legitimacy, Chinese officials are not allowed to circumvent public support by relying on terror, which is egregious “despotic power”, such as that employed by Joseph Stalin. So Chinese officials must maintain public confidence, they must convince the people that they are delivering and will continue to deliver, that the government is working effectively in the people’s interest. For example: Officials are not allowed to suspend the need for broad public support in the hope that they will regain it at a later date when the wisdom of their radical new policy initiative manifests in greater social utility. One of the ways to overcome this limitation is to experiment with radical policy in a limited geographical area, avoiding endangering broad support, but giving officials a chance to publicly demonstrate the advantages of the policy, allowing them to subsequently extend it without protest.

Improving living standards are the results the Chinese people are looking for, the results by which they primarily judge the legitimacy of their government. Chinese technocrats translate this into a basket of numerical indices which include, for example, a growth index, a green index, a poverty index (further reading: Glasshouse Forum, China Model). The goal of policy makers then becomes the optimization of this basket. Behind the calculation and optimization of policy are vast numbers of academics, economists and statisticians. Chinese technocrats regularly experiment with new policy ideas at the provincial level, and if successful introduce them nationwide. Massive localised infrastructure investments have leveraged the type of economy of scale economics which Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize describing. Whereas governments in most advanced democracies spend less than eight percent of government revenue on capital investment, this figure is close to fifty percent in China. The creation and incredible expansion of a highly competitive science and engineering focused educational system has also greatly contributed to the economic revolution. Many senior Chinese officials, including President Hu Jintao, have engineering degrees and industry backgrounds. In principle, opinion polls can be used to estimate the utility functions of the populace, allowing scientists to construct the best basket of statistics. Policy making looses all ideological colour, it becomes a purely pragmatic scientific process, a vast economic optimization problem driven by statistics and experimentation.

In summary, at the heart of Chinese Government we have a committee of expert scientists / engineers / economists running policy designed to maximize performance legitimacy constrained by the necessity of maintaining popular support. In the last thirty years these experts have delivered an average annualized GDP growth rate of over 10%, even the Japanese post war economic miracle only managed 8½%. It is an unparalleled achievement, and just as Lipset predicts, Chinese government is consequently hugely popular with the Chinese masses and politically stable.

Further Reading: http://www.theoligarch.com/scientific_development_concept_china_political_philosphy.htm

The similarity of these 3 events is that they are natural disasters with many deaths and many more left homeless. However, for those who lost their home in such a large scale natural disasters, which government do you think do more and care more for their citizens in need? The so-called “autocratic” regime in Beijing, China or the so-called “democratic” and “human right” governments in USA and Australia?

The scale of damage to property and the human cost in the 3 natural disasters:

- Australia: Black Saturday (Bush fire) in Victoria 2009:

The fires killed 173 people, injured 414 with 7,562 people displaced. The list of damage to property are as follows:

· 450,000 ha (1,100,000 acres) burnt

· Over 3,500 structures destroyed, including 2,029+ houses, 59 commercial properties (shops, pubs, service stations, golf clubs, etc), 12 community buildings (including 2 police stations, 3 schools, 3 churches, 1 fire station), 399 machinery sheds, 729 other farm buildings, 363 hay sheds, 19 dairies, 26 woolsheds.

To learn more: Wikipedia.

- USA: Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans 2005

The flood killed 1,464 people, and an approximately 200,000 people were evacuated from the Gulf Coast Region to Texas, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. Of the more than 400,000 residents who lived in New Orleans prior to Katrina, approximately 350,000 lived in areas that were damaged by the storm.

Again, please click on Wikipedia, and Amnesty International to learn more.

- China: Sichuan earthquake in 2008:

Approximately 15 million people lived in the quake affected area. More than 90,000 people in total were dead or missing in the earthquake and 374,176 injured. The quake left at least 5 million people without housing. The area affected by earthquakes exceeding liedu VI totals 440,442 km2, occupying an oval 936 km long and 596 km wide, spanning three provinces and one autonomous region.

Again, to learn more, click on Wikipedia.

Which governments do you think do more and care more for their citizens in need?

- Australia government

Out of the above three named natural disasters, Australia suffered the least in term of the scale and human cost of the disaster. Besides damages to a total of 3,500 structures including 2,029 + houses, the basic infrastructure such as road and other transport system were fully in tact. However, at the first anniversary of the disaster, let’s examine the governments performance during and after the disaster:

The disaster begin on 7 Feb 2009, the then Prime Minister ‘Rudd activates disaster plan’ (Brisbane Time, 9 Feb 2009) and announced a “$10 million in federal and Victorian government funds to help victims and emergency workers.”

Two days later, Mr Rudd told Parliament: “Hear this from the Government and the Parliament of the nation. Together we will rebuild each of these communities — brick by brick, school by school, community hall by community hall.” (Brisbane Time, 11 Feb 2009 – ‘We’ll rebuild: Rudd’)

However, he then begin to play politics with the well being of the disaster victims by “linking government relief for Victoria’s bushfire victims to its $42 billion economic stimulus package,” (Canberra Times, 11 Feb 2009 – ‘Opposition blasts bushfire, stimulus ‘link’‘)

Our media begin to compare Australia handling of the Victoria’s Bushfires with the American during the Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This is how the contributing editor of the Age, Russell Skelton wrote: “Where the Bush administration dithered for 48 hours after hurricane Katrina, leaving the flooded city of New Orleans without help, in Victoria, government and non-government agencies such as the Red Cross were on the ground from first light. Within days a reconstruction authority was set up along with a royal commission.” (The Age, 31 March 2009 – Out of the fire)

As usual in this country, the words of the politicians always sound louder than action. The actual outcome to the victims of the fires was: ‘Australia, Survivors of Victorian bushfires receive minimal compensation’ (wsws.org, 28 April 2009). One should note that: “More than 2020 homes were destroyed in the “Black Saturday” fires; 700 or just under a third of these had no insurance. Nevertheless, Victorian fire survivors have only received token government support. Small farmers unable to prove that over 51 percent of their income is derived from their properties will receive nothing from the official public bushfire appeal fund.”

Despite the fact that: “Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby has granted a one-off $50,000 grant for owner-occupiers whose homes were destroyed and the possibility of an additional $40,000 for some victims, subject to government approval” The arrangement was : “according to the premier, $35,000 of this amount can be used for building expenses and the remaining $15,000 for restoration of home contents. Those with homes partially destroyed by the fires and those who were renting will receive $15,000. The state government is charging survivors who have been forced into temporary accommodation a “maintenance” fee of up to $100 per week “.

The reality was: “These paltry grants will not even cover the cost of repairs, let alone fully replace homes and contents. They amount to a fraction of the cost of a home in the fire affected areas.” (Full report by wsws.org)

14 months on, our Reconstruction Authority which was set up within days of the bush fire seems to have done a “great” job? Frankly speaking, as someone who read dozen of Australian Newspapers every day, I have no idea what our “Reconstruction Authority” done so far for the bushfire victims? This was how the Herald Sun reported on the 4 April 2010 (without mentioning the Reconstruction Authority) – ‘Slow and steady but no promise of winning race’. The reality on the ground after one year are:

“HUNDREDS of people in the worst-affected zones are committing to rebuild after Black Saturday,” “But progress is patchy in some areas, and statistics reinforce that it will be many years before the destruction is close to being repaired.”

“Just under 300 rebuilding permits have been issued for houses, sheds and commercial properties in Marysville and the surrounding triangle,” “Locals believe as few as 50 houses are actually being rebuilt in Marysville while many permits are probably for sheds.”

“In the Kinglake Ranges, taking in Kinglake, Pheasant Creek and Toolangi, 361 building permits have been sought. There were 505 properties destroyed there on February 7.” and again: “There were 117 permits sought for Flowerdale and its sister hamlet, Hazeldene, compared with the 225 properties destroyed.”

The progress for reconstruction has been very slow, part of the reason mentioned by Herald Sun report was: “with the rebuilding process arduous for many – particularly those who lost family or can’t decide whether to face the risk of any disaster.”

However, I believe that among those 700 who were not insured, there must be people who do not have the financial ability to rebuilt but not mentioned by the media. The major reason for the “slow in progress” is actually due to bureaucratic red tape. I read a report about this aspect of the delay in building approval few months back, but unable to find back the link. However, one of the NSW’s local council has this statement in their website under the title: Rebuilding after a bush fire pointing out that: “When bushfire events do occur, Council’s ability to help in terms of the approval process is limited because State planning and building laws continue to apply as they would in normal circumstances, and Council is not at liberty to alter or ignore them.”

15 months on, a Royal Commission of Inquiry set up more than a year ago to investigate into the Victoria’s Bush Fire has the following finding:

“The tragically high death toll was caused by grossly inadequate emergency services, lack of fire warnings and the absence of any centralised evacuation plan.” The individual homeowners were left to decide by themselves whether they should “stay or go”. (WSWS, 28 May 2009 – ‘Australian bushfire royal commission: Survivors expose “stay or go” policy’)

The enquiry also find that: “None of those in command showed any real leadership” (News Limited, 28 May 2010 – ‘Black Saturday – Leaders faltered as Victoria burned’). The situation were:

“VICTORIA’S police minister and the state’s three most senior police officers were all absent from the emergency nerve centre when most of the deaths occurred on Black Saturday” (Herald Sun, 7 May 2010).

“The uncoordinated and chaotic division of responsibilities and functions of senior police and emergency services leadership points to the negligence of the state government of Premier John Brumby. It made no serious attempt to establish clear lines of command and communication inside the IECC prior to the devastating fires.” (WSWS, 17 May 2010 – ‘Australia: Government culpability in 2009 Victorian bushfires’)

As for the Federal Government, beside making some grand statements and posting for photo opportunities with the media at the beginning of the Bushfires and on its anniversary seems to disappear from the radar screen throughout the very slow rebuilding process. At the anniversary this year, the state government of Victoria was left alone to defend the delays in rebuilding including the rebuilding of schools in the bushfire-hit towns of Marysville and Strathewen (Herald Sun, 7 Feb 2010 – ‘Brumby defends bushfire rebuilding delays’)

- US government

Comparing to the Bush administration, Australian media did has the right to feel good about ourselves.

President Bush has been warned on the eve of Hurricane Katrina that New Orleans’ flood defences could be overcome” and “the risk to evacuees in the Superdome. However, “Mr Bush does not ask any questions as the situation is outlined to him.” (BBC, 2 March 2006 – ‘Video shows Bush Katrina warning’) That is, no action being taken by the President to do anything to the anticipated disaster.

During the disaster, a well research website in the US with links to its sources showing photos of the President enjoying himself – “playing Guitar While New Orleans Drowned”.

The research also show that: “Vice President Dick Cheney continued to enjoy his vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming during the whole debacle,” while “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bought $3000 worth of shoes at the exclusive NYC boutique Ferragamo.”

“Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert called for the bulldozing of New Orleans, saying that it didn’t make sense to spend the money to rebuild the city; he also initially refused to call a special session of Congress to appropriate emergency relief funds for the Gulf Coast, saying that FEMA was handling the situation perfectly well. Hastert capitulated to pressure from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to allow the vote, then tried to take credit for the funding.”

At the 4th anniversary of the disaster last year, reality on the ground of New Orleans indicated that, not much being done by the US government to rebuilt the flood affected areas. Amnesty International released a report with title: ‘The Facts: The Right to Return—Rebuilding the Gulf through the Framework of International Human Right.’ indicated that:

“Despite the passage of almost four years, thousands of those internally displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina who want to return to New Orleans are unable to do so.”

“More than 14,000 families living in metropolitan New Orleans are still receiving Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP) vouchers which help them pay rent. These vouchers come with an expiration date, which was recently changed from March 2009 to September 2009. Only approximately 7,500 of these families may be eligible for Housing Choice vouchers, which gives them access to Section 8 housing. Once the DHAP vouchers expire, the remaining families face potential homelessness. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) acknowledges that at least 4,000 of those who do not qualify for Section 8 housing will have difficulty finding affordable housing.”

The report further explained the situation: “After Katrina, the federal government placed tens of thousands of families in trailers which were meant to provide temporary shelter. Today, there are approximately 3,400 families still living in trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi, 760 of which are in New Orleans. After being told that they would be evicted if they did not vacate their trailers by May 30, 2009, the trailer residents will now be given the option to purchase their trailers for $5 or less. Many of the FEMA trailers contain levels of formaldehyde, a carcinogenic toxin, which are 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers. The federal government has indicated that trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde will not be available for purchase. As a result, only 1,160 of the trailers currently being used qualify for purchase by these IDPs. HUD has not yet provided a clear indication of how it will supply the remaining trailers.”

Here is the full Amnesty International Report in 2009

The mainstream cooperate media in US were basically silence on the problem in New Orleans. This is how AlterNet, an independent website reported the situation on 10 September 2009: ‘How Corporate Media Are Washing Away Katrina From America’s Mind’.

This year, on the March 2010, a blogger by the name of Douglas Brown has this personal account of what he watched first hand in New Orleans: “This week, I drove to New Orleans as part of a Mission Trip to help rebuild homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After five years, there are still literally thousands of people who are still homeless or living in trailers that FEMA provided in 2005. Most of these people are people who have little or no income, have lost family, often the main income earner, are elderly, widowed or disabled. There is no funding that these people can get to rebuild. They have nowhere to go, and in the richest nation in the world, the shame we saw when the poor were left behind when Katrina hit is still here, albeit not on National TV, since it is not a current story anymore.”

For your info, a US federal judge has ruled in November 2009 that the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (Brisbane Time, 20 Nov 2010 – ‘Corps’ negligence caused Katrina flooding’).

- China Government

Sharp Contrary to the performance of the Australia and US’s governments during a major natural disaster, Chinese leadership responded to the 2008 earthquake in a professional manner characterise by its high efficiency and comprehensiveness:

The military formed the key elements in the rescue process and its response to the earthquake was rapid with “the first Chinese military rescue team reportedly headed for the disaster area within 14 minutes after the strong earthquake began” (Hoover Institute Research: China Leadership Monitor – 2008 No 25 – ‘The Chinese Military’s Earthquake Response Leadership Team’).

The research also find that within days, “China’s armed forces dispatched more than 100,000 soldiers and armed police to help with rescue operations in earthquake-hit areas, dividing their units into three geographical rescue zones.”

“Military transport aircraft and helicopters had made 1,069 flights during the first week of operations, supplemented by 92 military trains and about 110,000 military vehicles, cranes, rubber boats, portable communication devices, and power generators. The military units had pulled 21,566 people both dead and alive from the debris, treated 34,051 injured people and transferred 205,370 people to safety”.

“115 medical teams were sent to the disaster zone, and quilts, food, medicine, and tents weighing 780,000 tons were distributed. The armed forces also airdropped 307 tons of relief supplies and repaired 557 kilometers of damaged roads.”

There are 9 working groups involved in the rescue mission: “Emergency Management and Relief Provision Group, Masses’ Livelihood Group, Seismic Monitoring Group, Sanitation and Epidemic Prevention Group, Propaganda Group, Production Restoration Group, Safeguarding Infrastructure and Post-Disaster Reconstruction Group, Water Resources Group, and the Public Order Group.”

The Time (14 May 2008 – ‘China Races to Save Quake Victims’) also has this account of the military involvement in the rescue mission: “On the streets of Dujiangyan the rescue troops are ubiquitous. Military vehicles are lined up, and People’s Armed Police and People’s Liberation Army soldiers, kitted out in crisp, matching green camouflage, are battling rain and rubble as they try to reach trapped survivors and control emotional crowds.”

The response from the top leadership in Beijing were also sweep and decisive. This is how Wikipedia described the rescue effort: “President Hu Jintao announced that the disaster response would be rapid. Just 90 minutes after the earthquake, Premier Wen Jiabao, who has an academic background in geomechanics, flew to the earthquake area to oversee the rescue work. Soon afterward, China’s Health Ministry said that it had sent ten emergency medical teams to Wenchuan County in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. On the same day, China’s Chengdu Military Area Command dispatched 50,000 troops and armed police to help with disaster relief work in Wenchuan County.”

Not long after the quake, the Chinese government begin to announce an eight-year reconstruction plan, which targets 2008-2010 for immediate recovery and 2011-2015 for long-term economic reconstruction. (International labour Organisation, 12 Oct 2009)

Within 16 months of the massive earthquake, Premier Wen Jiabao already re-visited the quake zone 8 times (This is the report of his 8th visit by the Hong Kong’s media, Ifeng news, 27 Sept 2009 in Chinese language).

A year later, China government released a report in regards to the progress of the rebuilding effort covering a wide range of issues and statistics including the reconstruction of schools, hospitals and residential building; the variety of assistance given to the farmer who lost their land, people who lost their home, old people who lost their children, children who lost their parents and people who became handicap; and the issue with employment, etc. (Detail in Ifeng News in Chinese language, 7 May 2009).

The Time’s journalist, Austin Ramzy has a personal account of the quake zone after 6 months as follows (The Time, 19 January 2010) :

“I went back to Sichuan six months after the catastrophe and was amazed at the speed of physical and economic recovery. In Dujiangyan, the largest city in the quake zone, the rubble and tent cities had disappeared. The jumble of debris was replaced by piles of new bricks, lumber and other construction materials. There was a building boom across the region, and dozens of temporary villages were erected to house the 5 million people who were rendered homeless by the quake. The prefab housing was made out of blue aluminum siding lined with Styrofoam insulation. It had concrete floors and was arranged in neat rows in flat spots at the bases of the mountains. Conditions weren’t luxurious, but the camps were clean and the housing dry and fairly warm.”

“I found no evidence of homelessness, though there were reports of people in the mountains who refused to spend their rebuilding funds and chose to remain in tents.”

“In 2008 the government said it would spend $176 billion on reconstruction by 2011. (The total recovery cost is estimated at $250 billion.) As of last June it had already spent more than $50 billion. Some of the expenses have been shouldered by other parts of China. Twenty provinces have set aside 1% of fiscal revenues for two years to help rebuild Sichuan.”

In fact, the kind of care the Chinese government extended to its citizens in needs has gone beyond financial aids and the reconstruction of buildings and infrastructures, their care for the people has extended to areas such as: “paid for group weddings and plan to hold a matchmaking fair.” (The Guardian, 11 May 2009 – A year on from the Chinese earthquake, love flourishes amid ruins of Sichuan)

In fact, the center of the quake begin from a village where the Tibetan’s live, and what the Australian media did not tell us is how China assist their minority to rebuilt their live. I will have a special article on this issue at an appropriate time with title: “Minority Policy—China Vs. Australia”.

Purpose of this article

The purpose of writing this article is to use actual examples of how the three governments (US, Australia and China) handled a major natural disaster to demonstrate one fundamental truth: That is, the world has yet to find a perfect political system. All form of government has its strength and weaknesses. For the sake of humanity, countries should learn from each other successful experience to improve on oneself.

Unfortunately, in Australia, despite the fact that we have daily news about China, our media not only failed to tell the Australian public the massive human right achievement China made to the more than 5 million people who lost their home in the 2008 Earthquake, some in our media industry systematically running smear campaign with invented stories to demonise China. For those who are interested to find out how? Click on this story: How the Australia Press Council protected media that violated it own written principles?

Conclusion: Democracy Needs Reform

Theoretically, democracy is supposed to bring about caring leaderships with the assumption of “from the people, by the people and for the people”. In practices, this may not be the case as the above 3 examples already demonstrated. Why?

Have we become complacent and obsessed with Winston Churchill assessment of democracy in 1947: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Is there any room for improvement? For examples, I believe it is fair for one to ask the following questions:

1) Has our current form of democratic process produce leaders with the right attitude, mindset and ability to care for the people in needs?

2) If not, what should we do to overcome those system deficiency?

3) Will it be a good idea to introduce the element of socialist philosophy into our democratic process? How?

4) Should we regards the inability of a government to care for their citizens in need a human right issue?

The 2009 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report rank China 98 (USD3,678) out of 180 countries based on its per capital GDP, Australia rank 11 (USD45,587) and USA 9 (USD46,381). However, why China out perform the two much richer countries in term of caring for their citizens in need?

If democracy is define as government ‘listening and caring for their citizens in need’, I believe, China has no doubt achieve such goal.

I will continue to write a series of articles using the heading ‘Democracy Needs Reform’ before moving into the area of analysing the solutions. Unfortunately, I was banned by the Australian Media as an accredited Journalist from enjoying my membership due to my political view, so I reckon, most Australians would have to be happy with the Age contributing editor assessment that: “Australia is better than USA.”

However, my up coming article, ‘Democracy Needs Reform—Australia Voters Facing a Basket of Rotten Apples’ may provide some insight into why both Australia and US’s governments failed to care for their people in needs during the Bush Fires in Victoria and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

To read with hyperlink, please visit: http://www.outcastjournalist.com/index_democracy_need_reform_australia_china_n_usa_a_tale_of_3_natural_disaster.htm

Written on 2 Aug 2010 by www.outcastjournalist.com

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