Bullet Train tragedy accident in China

Two bullet trains collided in a Southern Chinese city, Fuzhou, on July 23rd, with a casualty of over 40 people. Why this has happened is still under investigation, and hopefully will be revealed by mid-September, according to Xinhua Net. One of the articles about this from the New York Times majorly repeats what has been reported on the Chinese media.

As of now, the initial explanation that has been given by the the Chinese government is that the lightning of that night confused the operating system that commands both trains. The  first train lost its power and stopped, and the second train did not get any stop signal. I give the benefit of doubt on this explanation. I’m still waiting on the final authoritative version, if there is ever going to be one.

One thing that strikes me as bizarre is that the rescue workers berried the cars that had fallen off the bridge within 24 hours after the accident, saying that the trains carry high-profile technologies that the government doesn’t want its competitors to know about. Well, the first train was basically imported from Canada and the second one was from Japan, so the high-profile technology the Chinese government was talking about was not theirs to begin with. I don’t if the transportation authorities were trying to get by by berrying the evidence so quickly or they are just plain ignorant about some common sense that you don’t get rid of wreck until you are more than 100% sure there is no body in the wreck. Some interviews with rescue workers have been revealed saying that the transportation department leaders gave commands to berry the wreck when no sign of life was detected by machines, until some of the rescue workers petitioned to double-check and they did find a young girl still alive covered by layers of dead bodies. Here’s a story on this for those of you who read Chinese.

Questions have been raised up about if China is really ready for high-speed trains. The operating system that took most of the blame in this accident is from a company in Beijing and has been put in use since 2009. It has been talked about that China could be an exporter of bullet trains, and China has been trying really hard on this. Within the past six years,some bullet train speed has been raised six times to 350km/h. While Japan has no bullet train with speed above 300km/h, although Japanese high-speed train could reach 420km/h in testing runs, according to an article on suhu.net. With such a accident, China most likely can forget about the business of exporting bullet trains for a while.

I want to say this is another reminder to China that it might has been trying to develop too hard too fast.

China Daily–attempt to balance reportings on China

I was just reading New York Times at a dining hall the other day, and suddenly I came across this entire page of reporting on China–Chinese reporters, posy photos of world leaders at a monetary forum, general headlines with promising development–it just felt like I was reading Chinese newspaper all over again. Just as I was wondering why New York Times changes its tone about China, I realized that the whole page was an advertisement of China Daily, an English newspaper of China.

When I was in China, learning English, China Daily used to be one of my sources for news, until when I started studying in the U.S. and reading newspapers abroad, I began to realize China Daily is just another Chinese newspaper, well yeah, in English format. From what I understand, China Daily is more like a tool–a tool to teach foreigners some basics about China, for example, the website has introductions on the structure of the Chinese government; also and more importantly, to give foreigners the Chinese-style news.

China Daily U.S. edition was launched in 2009. Its lack of in-depth reporting indicates the young age of this newspaper quite often. Many of the stories on its website carries big headlines, but whenever I open this articles, they turned out to be just a couple of paragraphs, and many times, no analyze or quotes at all. This shouldn’t be what a mainstream newspaper do when it comes to reporting.

Despite all these, I somehow want to cut some slacks for it. I mean, after all, it’s new in the game, and China Daily is still recruiting better analytical writers of better grasp of English. Some good articles are already appearing, although many of them still may read odd and a little Chinglish-like.

I actually have this respect for those reporters working for China Daily. They face the pressure from the Chinese government, but they still want to tailor their stories for Western taste. So they have to find the balanced area, where they could write good in-depth stories and not getting into troubles for what they write about.

Sigh…Freedom of religion in China,not yet…

A recent Christian church crack-down in Beijing, China’s capital city, made on New York Times. This follows the crack-downs of congregations in many other Chinese cities, and arrests of some of the high-profile critics of the government, driven by the fear of possible local chaos inspired by Arab revolutions, the article says.

I was surprised by the already sizable influence of Western religions in China, a country which has the world’s biggest secular population. I would say Confucius and Taoism are more like philosophy than they are religions. Chinese people believe in saints and their sayings. Before our values were all messed up by the industrialization, years of partial colonization, wars, and experimental development, we used to follow tightly what those saints teach us. However, as it turned out, philosophies as such could hardly survive in a country where 70% of the population are still in rural area, struggling below poverty line and the other 30% buried in the dust of cities that sprung up at over speed limit.

When I was a freshman in Zhejiang University in southern China before I came to the United States, I actually attended Christian services for a couple of times. I heard about this underground church from my roommate, who was persuaded by a church member. We would, on Sundays, take a bus for about a hour to a downtown building, which from outside looks like a deserted office building. We would be led by a church member into an iron door, through a tiny corridor, to a room full of  portable plastic chairs and in the front, a stage, where priests led the prayers. During many of the chantings, I would be tearful, when I related those chanting to my experiences, maybe I’m just too emotional a person.

I stopped going to that church as my classes stared going crazy and many other stuff took away the luxury of traveling three hours to and from the church. It was quite an experience, I have to say. However, it’s quite hard and somehow weird to suddenly believe in something which I wasn’t brought up believing in. I’m not even sure if Jesus speaks Mandarin Chinese.

I still want to say we need to give China time. No country would reach any achievement without twisting and struggling, and we are talking about this huge country China, for crying out loud. Just think about all the debate around JFK being a Catholic and, oh yeah, the improper treatment of Muslims in this country after the 9/11 attack before making any judgement.

Why outsourcing to China is acutally beneficial for U.S.?

A Wall Street Journal article talks about multinational corporations outsourcing jobs on a rise, while cutting jobs in the U.S. Well, this is what one should expect in a time of free-trade and free-investment ( of course, not that free all the time, but…). I don’t quite understand why this has been under attack so many times. Yeah, politicians need to find someone to blame in order to make themselves sound smart and popular. But anyone who has taken basic economics classes should know that this is beneficial for all.

Any firm that is seeking to maximize its profit looks for every possibility to lower the costs. International trade is based on comparative advantages. China doesn’t have as high productivity as many of the developed countries, such as U.S. (yet). But China compensates this disadvantage by the low wage, low enough to give China a comparative advantage in the international trade. Firms choose to allocate their resources the best and the cheapest. So many multinational firms move their manufacturing lines and customer services to developing countries such as China, where the labor costs much less and more and more customers are located.

Scott Linciome, who is an international trade attorney and political adviser, seems to have a clearer mind on the benefits of trade and outsourcing than, say, some of the journalists and radio hosts.

The concept of smiling curve by Stan Shih

I also want to give a reminder of the so-called Smiling Curve, which shows most profits (most value added to products) of businesses go to who have patents&technology and brand&service. Developing countries, however struggling to try to higher on the smiling curve, still remain, for the most part, at the bottom of the curve, earning minimum profits and sucking in whatever pollution there is during the process. The major chunk of the profits goes back to the multinational corporations, well, their share holders, and who are those share holders?  Americans!

The ongoing trend of outsourcing low-level jobs actually is helping U.S. to upgrade its job market composition, to one that consisting of mostly jobs of high quality and benefits.

Yes, The Chinese are coming

An article in Apr. 11′s New York Times is about Chinese do businesses and trade and provide aid in a South American country: Suriname.

Before this article, I don’t even know the existence of country Suriname. I was amazed to know that people from my mother land have traveled thousands of miles to this country at a corner on the other side of the globe. Not only did they travel this far, but they also managed to stay, make a living and even assist local development. Most of the labors in Suriname have gone to this country through a company based at my hometown city, Dalian. I can totally see this coming. There’s a labor surplus in China for low entry jobs, which pushed some of the workers on a search for opportunities elsewhere.

A recent BBS documentary named The Chinese are coming, depicts how Chinese immigrant workers fare in several South African countries. Most of those workers take construction jobs in those countries, which makes sense, because many of the African countries really need basic infrastructure. Thousands of construction workers have been building roads and buildings, and many others have entered other fields, such as grocery stores, farmers’ market, selling motorcycles, and so on. As much as I’m aware of many of the undesirable traits that Chinese people have, I do respect that us Chinese are willing to endure any difficulty and swallow whatever bitterness there is in order to survive and proper. Just like a Chinese who sells motor bikes in Zambia, if I remember correctly, puts it: Westerners hesitate to invest in many of the African countries due to unknown risk and unsteady conditions, but Chinese wouldn’t care as much, all they see are opportunities.

For the concern that China expands maybe too fast, and to the extreme that some critics would go, China is exploiting those countries, I guess they are not pro-free-trade, however, they would claim themselves to be. Chinese investment in those countries is mostly an effect of the free trade, let be goods or labor. There’s no need to condemn any player simply for its size or growth pace.

Press Freedom in China? working on it!

I have been working with the Global Journalist Show since the last semester, and on April. 14 our show is going to be on press freedom. When it comes to this topic, China has to be on sport light. Our producer finds this great guest, Xi Yue, who had worked for AP Beijing bureau for three years and now pursuing his master’s degree at Missouri School of Journalism.

The producers think it a good idea to interview him in Mandarin and make it an extended version of our show. And as I speak Mandarin Chinese, I will be hosting the extended show. YAY!

I have been talking with Xi Yue recently in order to get familiar with him. Also, I’ve always wanted to work at a foreign bureau in Asia, so I really want to learn about Xi’s experiences.

His reporting experiences, as he put it, is pretty normal. But as a Chinese reporter working for a foreign news media, Xi had to be very careful about what he wrote about. Chinese reporters, after all, are Chinese citizens. They don’t have any protection from the county where the readers are. Once in a while, representatives from the propaganda department would meet with these reporters working for foreign media to ask for their “corporation”, basically to tell them not to go across the line and there would be consequences of they do.

I have a friend who used to work for Reuters Beijing. He didn’t scare me with any horror stories of disciplined journalists. He left Reuters majorly for the little opportunity of promotions. Just a quick mention, this guy had graduated from the second ranking university in China. He said that it’s hard for him to do much more than some typical boring analysis. And the big stories are for the correspondences of the foreign country.

An article on Economist early this year says that China has tightened its control over words across Chinese media in the fear that movements in Egypt could stir turbulence in this country. However, the control over Chinese media was loosen up during the Beijing Olympic Game. Also, trace has been there among the Chinese media to somehow show their independence, well, once in a while.

For example, during U.S. President Obama’s trip to China, Chinese media were “highly suggested” not to talk about human rights. A Chinese newspaper “Nanfang Zhoumo”, left its one page blank, where they would have put the stories about Obama’s trip. The blank page indicates the upset and irony toward the requirement from the central government not to talk about human rights.

And if you understand Mandarin Chinese and want to know more on Chinese press freedom, here’s a link of the extended version of Global Journalist Show which comes up on April.14.

http://www.globaljournalist.org/radio/2011/04/14/

I still have to say that China needs time to reform. There are just so many items on the to-do list. Think about the Partisan Journalism era of America, media used to be tools in America as well. Especially, unity and collective spirit are rooted in the minds of Chinese people. It takes time for the media and Chinese people as whole to adopt new concepts.

Chinese education vs.U.S. education

This is a funny video about a author who had lived in HK for a while and talks about Chinese education and American education.

Yes, there are lots of difference between the HK education and mainland education, but HK education could still be a window to learn about Chinese education.

Krassel mentioned that Chinese students know more about America or the western world than the American students do about China or other parts of the world. I get to realize this after I have started studying in the U.S.. When Americans asked about China, I was always surprised that they seldom knew any history of my country. On the other side,  I do know almost all the basics of American history. This is sort of the result of the arrogance of the Western dominance. Americans, being in a country with the largest economy and many other dominant powers, don’t put much attention about learning other cultures, and whenever they have encounters with them, they perhaps assume that other cultures will adapt to them. So I do suggest eliminating this kind of arrogance be embedded into American education, and be humble.

Another surprise is that how bad Americans are about math, even basic mathematical logic. I’m double majoring in economics, and I’m always frustrated by the questions from American students about the basic math. Funny it is, many Americans don’t even know how to count from 1-10 using just one hand! Chinese education puts a lot of effort into making students sharp in math and logic. Whenever some piece of new knowledge being passed along, teachers always would give out exercise questions, mostly not following exactly what the teacher has taught, unlike what many American teachers would do, just to train students to utilize what they’ve learned to solve different types of questions.

However, Chinese education maybe has gone too far about training students about “logic”. It’s the “logic of unity” that Chinese students have been repeatedly being trained. There’s usually only one answer for those exercise questions, and students are punished for stepping out of the box. Most students below university level are required to wear uniforms, and some schools even require girls to wear short hair to avoid them from being distracted by their long hair while studying.

Also, schooling in China is hard work, seriously hard work, well, before university. Thousands of students have to study usually 12- 16 hours a day in order to get a good grade on the college-entrance exam. But whenever they enter the college, the effort they would put into studying drop significantly. Mostly because the teachers in Chinese colleges care more about their status in the school than they do about students. Teachers  are usually busy about publishing more papers or taking other outside-university jobs, so when it comes to teaching students, the standard usually is pretty loose. There are some exceptions in those top ranking universities in China, but there are too few like those to make a difference.

Don’t worry, be happy

A recent Economist article talks about the Chinese government tries to increase the happiness of the Chinese citizens and ,at the same time, keeps a modest growth rate. I’m not sure how well this policy is going to be executed, because one of the biggest problem about national government that has central control is that the effect of any certain policy would be reduced by each layer of the local government.

Published on Economist, Mar.17, 2011

Yeah, it sounds like a rosy picture to make 1.3 billion people happier, at a cost of not rapid growth. However, when it comes to a city level, it might just be a couple of paid articles favoring the government, and maybe not much has really been done.

I do support the idea of making  increasing the utility of people one of the most important, or even the ultimate goal of a central government.

It’s spring, building resumes…

Winter is kind of a dead season for real estate, well, at least for the Northern China. I know this because my dad always gets a long time off during winter seasons. Now it’s March, it’s spring. Tons of workers has started to come back to the cities and work, most likely, on construction. So it’s hit time for media to talk about Chinese real estate.

An Economist article  actually gives one of some of the modest and well-rounded perspective of the Chinese real estate market. This article puts China in a global setting, and mentioned about the enormous demand, which I think is the major driving force of the high price.

“That demand is undoubtedly enormous. Brazil is thought to be short of some 8m homes; the whole of India has fewer hotel rooms than Las Vegas; in Saudi Arabia a long-awaited mortgage law is expected to kickstart a residential boom. Yet the pitfalls are also cavernous. Legal issues are one source of uncertainty. Investors complain that China’s system is capricious, for instance. “China will be one of the biggest property markets in the world in five years’ time,” says one big fund manager. “But if you put millions into a building in China and sell it, it is not clear that you will be able to take your money out.” Retail lenders express similar misgivings about the process for repossessing homes in developing markets.”

Comparing Chinese provinces’s GDP with countries

Economist just posted a roll-over graphic for readers to compare the GDP of Chinese provinces with countries. Here’s a snap shot of what it looks like:

China has the world’s second large economy right now, and this is a great way to show just how big it is. Some of the numbers might be over-exaggerated. Well, given the pressure from the central government to reach certain goals, local government might have just reported that they did to avoid embarrassment and troubles.

However, when it comes to GDP per person, the numbers drop significantly, and actually kind of sad. Take my hometown province for example, the total GDP is the equivalent of United Arab Emirates, but GDP per person is only about $10,772, which is below the U.S. poverty line for a one-person family. On the world GDP per capita list, China ranks about in the middle. This means that, in this country, which might appear like a looming GDP beast to many of the foreigners, most of the Chinese people are still leading a life of low-quality.