Posts by Chris Waugh
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I've been wanting to say this for a while now: Could you Aucklanders have a wee whip round and buy Steven Joyce a plane ticket to Beijing? Cos then I could show him:
1: What happens when you focus your urban planning and economic growth on car-based sprawl.
2: What investing in a modern transport system looks like - i.e. massive investment in a subway system and light rail to the outer suburbs and improving the bus network (which was pretty damn good to begin with, but is constantly getting better).
3: Bicycles actually are really good for commuting, and no, New Zealand's climate is not so stinkingly hot that Kiwi cyclists need a shower at their destination.I was actually really impressed last time I was in NZ by all the new cycling infrastructure, because I remember there being basically none, and a bike is very high on my list of necessary purchases when we move back.
I agree that drivers' expectations and attitudes need to change. Despite the utterly insane traffic here, I always felt safe cycling in China, and I think that's precisely because of the understanding that cyclists have just as much right to the road as everybody else, that cyclists are numerous, and that cyclists are likely to pop out at you from anywhere. I seem to have a lot more memories of being put in danger in 4 1/2 years in Dunedin than in 1 year each in Changsha, Taiyuan and Tianjin and 9+ years in Beijing.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Roger,
An odd little <br /> crept into your link, meaning it gives a "bad request" instead of the photo.
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One more for the 'closer to home' basket. This case is just bizarre.
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Ah, missionaries. I knew a group out in Taiyuan that required their members to do two years of language study in country before beginning work, and they worked closely with the local legal church and government to provide things like English teaching and medical care. They had a doctor working in a hospital in central Taiyuan and ran a clinic in a village on the outskirts of the city. They knew and respected the local language(s), culture, customs and laws.
On the other hand, there's still plenty running around with that lazy assumption that their culture is Christianity, casually destroying cultures and lifestyles, just like old Orsmond. Fortunately China's too big and stubborn to suddenly drop everything and change just cos some 20-something American fresh out of Bible college (which is who they mostly seem to be) tells them to. I was talking to a friend about this just last night, and he said he's seen them in action in smaller, more vulnerable places, with far worse results.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Heather from Auckland,
My point was that it's not Apple, Dell, HP, etc that do the manufacturing, but Foxconn and similar companies. It's Foxconn and its ilk that do the abusing of workers and the environment. Boycotting Apple might hurt Foxconn a little bit, but it still has plenty of income from the other companies looking to get gadgets built.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Peter Graham,
Interesting piece. Bits I liked:
about 230,000 of whom produce products for Apple, the others assembling for Dell, HP, just about every electronics company in fact
Exactly. If you're gonna do a boycott you might as well do it properly and give up all your gadgets. Back to pen and paper and licking the back of stamps.
The question is not whether $17 a day is a low wage or not: it’s low relative to what? For a start, working those 6 day weeks that comes out to an annual income of $6,000 a year. No, not great riches by our standards but in China it’s a pretty fair whack.
That's the better part of 40k yuan Renminbi? Factor in free dorm and other benefits. It's not great, but certainly doable, and as pointed out, higher than average. I'm guessing those based in the Chengdu factories face a lower cost of living, anyway, but if even here in Beijing, which absurdly keeps coming out near the top in "expensive cities for expats to live in" surveys (yeah, right. Only if you need a fancy house in a gated community, chauffeured car, international schools for the kids, plenty of entertainment focussed solely on the expat community, and other ways of segregating yourself from your host society), it's entirely possible to live cheaply. On that kind of package it would actually be possible to save enough to buy an iPad. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be possible.
And a nitpick:
a massive famine caused by Mao’s communist idiocy.
I don't see how there's anything particularly communist about having farmers make steel in backyard furnaces rather than tend their crops and animals. Seems like your common or garden variety dictatorial lunacy to me.
Trouble with that article, though, is that Tim Worstall is being rational. He should know better than that.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Sure, and just between us, I suspect those workers would love significantly better pay and conditions.
Which is why, over the last few years, there have been reports of a labour shortage in the Pearl River Delta as migrant workers have collectively told the factories there that pay and conditions aren't good enough and have gone home.
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I seem to remember getting better pics out of my old Nokia N72 than my new Nokia 5230.... You'll just have to trust me that this sunset was way more awesome than it looks. A touch on the chilly side, though. Taken from the Rishang Market, east side of Yanqing County Town, looking past the newish Protestant church, as we were stocking up on the last of the CNY goodies.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to BenWilson,
And on the less crazy end of the scale, they're also investing in water recycling, efficiency (e.g. drip irrigation), rainwater collection, and adjusting the massively subsidised water prices, like hiking the price/cutting the subsidy to water-intensive businesses (including car washes and bathhouses). I'm picking desalination plants will start to appear in coastal regions in the near future, too. Personally, I suspect those smaller-scale, local projects will have a greater effect than the South-North water diversion. After all, the Yangtze has its source in the same Himalayan glaciers as the Yellow and Huai (and Mekong, Irrawaddy, Salween, Bhramaputra, Ganges, Indus...).
Still, one thing NZ's leadership really should learn from China's central leadership, far from being bullying and intimidation of journalists, is the value of strategic thinking. The South-North Water Diversion is crazy, but it has a certain logic, and along with all this other investment in cleaning the place up and securing water supplies, it shows a lot of attention is being paid to fixing some very long term problems and ensuring a viable future. "More dairy farms, and put them in areas unsuited to dairy farming!" seems to be more on the level of township and village governments here. But although China is very authoritarian, I don't think it's down to the ability of the Chairman to simply order things done - decision making, especially now that each administration serves two consecutive five year terms during which the successor administration is set and cultivated, seems to involve a lot more hashing things out through committees and between factions over quite an extended period than bellowing orders like a bully boy village leader.
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Hard News: Getting to the bottom of…, in reply to BenWilson,
Yup. Add in the minor political parties, protest (those I’ve seen have been limited to groups of unhappy-looking people standing around outside the local government hq being watched by a few cops, posters pasted next to a public notice, or grafitti, and at least one was very successful), a nascent civil society in the form of NGOs and various associated movements, and the internet. I personally suspect China will eventually democratise, but the resulting democracy will look and function very differently from anything outside Mainland China as it will very gradually evolve to suit Chinese conditions.
ETA: and thanks.
