Health | Wandering China

May 4, 2013 • 10:25 am 0

Rat Meat Sold as Lamb Highlights Fear in China [New York Times] #RisingChina #FoodSafety

Evidence not all Chinese are positioned to participate in China’s rise as part of a collective leap.

“Food safety and environmental protection face the same problem that although regulatory capacity has expanded, there’s been no fundamental change for the better… The fact that the police have become involved shows how serious the problems still are.” Mao Shoulong, professor of public policy at Renmin University in Beijing

To read the actual Ministry of Public Security report please go here (In Chinese)
公安机关集中打击肉制品犯罪保卫餐桌安全

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Rat Meat Sold as Lamb Highlights Fear in China
By Chris Buckley
Source – New York Times, published May 3, 2013

HONG KONG — Even for China’s scandal-numbed diners, inured to endless outrages about food hazards, news that the lamb simmering in the pot may actually be rat tested new depths of disgust.

In an announcement intended to show that the government is serious about improving food safety, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday that the police had caught a gang of traders in eastern China who bought rat, fox and mink flesh and sold it as mutton. But that and other cases of meat smuggling, faking and adulteration featured in Chinese newspapers and Web sites on Friday were unlikely to instill confidence in consumers already queasy over many reports about meat, fruit and vegetables laden with disease, toxins, banned dyes and preservatives.

Sixty-three people were arrested and accused of “buying fox, mink and rat and other meat products that had not undergone inspection,” which they doused in gelatin, red pigment and nitrates, and sold as mutton in Shanghai and adjacent Jiangsu Province for about $1.6 million, according to the ministry’s statement. The report, posted on the Internet, did not explain how exactly the traders acquired the rats and other creatures.

“How many rats does it take to put together a sheep?” said one typically baffled and angry user of Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog service that often acts as a forum for public venting. “Is it cheaper to raise rats than sheep?”

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Filed under: 52 Unacceptable Practices, Beijing Consensus, Bird Flu, China Dream, Chinese Model, Collectivism, Corruption, Crime, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Government & Policy, Health, Infrastructure, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Poverty, Reform, Resources, The Chinese Identity

May 1, 2013 • 10:10 am 0

Dairy producers must reforge their identity [Global Times] #RisingChina #InfantFormula #Dilemma

A fundamental fix for otherwise China’s fourth rise simply cannot be sustained.

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OP-ED
Dairy producers must reforge their identity
By Wang Xuefeng and Zhang Jixing
Source – Global Times, published April 27, 2013

On April 10, Zheng Yuesheng, spokesman for the General Administration of Customs of China, said that as the importing of milk powder keeps expanding, it has become necessary to restrict and punish the illegal carrying of baby formula into the Chinese mainland. He also stressed that the punishment would be heavier to smugglers who bring in baby formula for trade.

Baby formula smugglers, more often nicknamed “baby formula hand-carriers,” convey baby formula into Chinese mainland not for self-use, but for trade or to earn commissions. From a few tins to vessels or trucks, they have made enormous profits from this under-the-table business.

Partly owing to these carriers, the huge demand for baby formula has even threatened the regulators of international markets. The concern aroused by Chinese buyers has made the purchase restrictions their only choice.

The “hand-carrying” business disturbs the order of the domestic market and the foreign trade. It also puts the domestic dairy market at a higher risk, because the quality of baby formula without an identified source cannot be guaranteed.

Please click here to read the full article at its source.

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Filed under: Chinese Model, Corruption, Domestic Growth, Government & Policy, Health, Hong Kong, Mapping Feelings, Peaceful Development, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, The Chinese Identity, Trade

April 9, 2013 • 1:07 am 0

Virus shows China’s progress and limitations [Global Times] #RisingChina #H7N9 #Healthcare

A decade on since the pre-Internet-savvy Chinese decision makers miscalculated with SARs, this demonstrates the new leadership’s effectiveness, despite their Boao engagements.

This Global Times argues that the victory on information transparency is just that. China has real teething issues with health care human resources. Affordable health insurance provided by the state has kicked in, yes. But complaints about the lack of doctors resonated every corner I traveled in China. Queues are long.

The country’s complex conditions are on full display as the disease spreads. China has first-rate labs, but it also has limited healthcare infrastructure, especially in rural areas. Some have pointed out that although theoretically the hospital bills for H7N9 victims should be paid by the government, emergency treatment funds and healthcare support channels are still lacking. (Global Times, April 7, 2013)

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Virus shows China’s progress and limitations
By Chen Chenchen
Source – Global Times, published April 7, 2013

The rising number of identified human cases of the H7N9 virus in China has put some other countries and regions on alert, though experts believe the chance of a global epidemic is still low. However, international opinion seems to have acknowledged “significant changes” in China’s response to disease outbreaks.

Gregory Hartl, a World Health Organization spokesman, praised the Chinese response, including immediate reporting and information volunteering, as “excellent.” Since SARS, the public health debacle that occurred one decade ago, China has reformed its epidemic handling system, especially infection reporting and tracking mechanisms. Experts from US health agencies believe the close cooperation with their Chinese counterparts in recent years has helped a lot in terms of China’s flu monitoring and lab testing.

This public health reform is due to changes in the mentality of governing bodies. The top leadership has promised transparency in virus reporting. This has been judged by China’s observers to be a new way of thinking which is more open and effective in maintaining social stability.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Bird Flu, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Domestic Growth, Environment, global times, Government & Policy, Health, Infrastructure, Modernisation, Politics, Population, Reform, Social, The Chinese Identity

April 6, 2013 • 11:00 am 0

Shanghai starts culling fowl [China Daily] #China #BirdFlu2013

Not leaving it to chance. The Chinese act decisively after promising transparency yesterday.

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Shanghai starts culling fowl
By YU RAN in Shanghai
Source – China Daily, published April 6, 2013

No sign seen of human-to-human transmission of H7N9 bird flu

Technicians wearing protection suits begin to cull fowl early on Friday at a poultry wholesale market in the Songjiang district of Shanghai where the H7N9 bird flu virus was detected in pigeon samples. Photo by Liu Xin / For China Daily

All live poultry markets in Shanghai will be closed from Saturday after H7N9 bird flu virus was found in pigeon samples from a farm product market in the Songjiang district, the municipal government announced on Friday.

Early on Friday morning, 20,536 birds were slaughtered at the Huhuai wholesale market, where the infected pigeons were found the day before.

To date, the city has reported six cases of H7N9 bird flu, and four people have died from the virus. The other two, an adult and a 4-year-old boy, remain in a hospital.

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Filed under: Bird Flu, Charm Offensive, China Daily, Chinese Model, Communications, Disaster, Domestic Growth, Environment, Government & Policy, Health, Infrastructure, New Leadership, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Resources

April 5, 2013 • 4:31 am 0

3 Daily Chinese Headlines on Rising China [WanderingChina05042013] #RisingChina

3 Daily Headlines on Rising China:

From abroad
#1 Skepticism of China’s rhetoric and intent on global leadership. Source – Slate

Domestic
#2 Bird flu becoming a threat in China, transparency promised. Source – China Daily

Picture paints a thousand words
#3 Photo – to counter all the negative press, a stunning image of a terraced paddy field in SW China – ancient harmony Source – Xinhua/Global Times

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#1 China’s Empty Dreams
If Beijing wants to be taken seriously as a global leader, it needs to begin to deal with the nightmare that is North Korea.
By Anne Applebaum|

Source – Slate, published April 3, 2013, at 7:11 PM

Which is all fair enough: China is a large and rapidly growing economic power. It’s only natural that China should begin to play an important international role. But if that’s what Beijing wants, why doesn’t it seize the opportunity? The Chinese could begin to play a valuable and prominent international role right now, one that would win their government friends and admirers and might even, over time, reduce the U.S. military presence in North Asia by eliminating one of the region’s most serious potential conflicts: Starting today, the Chinese could put an end to the grotesque farce that is the North Korean regime and, together with the United States, usher in the reunification of the Korean peninsula.

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#2 Transparency promised in fight against virus
by Wang Qian
Source – China Daily, published April 5, 2013

14 cases confirmed, five die from new strain of bird flu

China’s health authorities have promised transparency and pledged to mobilize resources nationwide to combat a new strain of deadly bird flu that has killed five people.

By Thursday night, the country’s total number of confirmed bird flu cases increased to 14 – four in Jiangsu, six in Shanghai, one in Anhui and three in Zhejiang. One of the latest victims was a 48-year-old man from Jiangsu province, who transported poultry for a living. He died of H7N9 bird flu in Shanghai on Thursday.

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#3 Paddy fields under golden sunlight in SW China
Xinhua
Source – Global Times, published April 5, 2013

Source – Global Times

This bird eye view shows paddy fields in golden sunlight at Jiangping Village of Wuzhuan Town in Donglan County, southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on April 4, 2013. (Xinhua/Zhou En’ge)

Filed under: 3Daily, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Culture, Domestic Growth, Government & Policy, Hard Power, Health, History, Infrastructure, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Soft Power, South Korea, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities

April 4, 2013 • 8:50 am 2

You Get What You Pay For’: The Hidden Price of Food from China [Spiegel Online] #China #Food

The sleeper has to awake on this one.

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‘You Get What You Pay For’: The Hidden Price of Food from China
By SPIEGEL Staff: SUSANNE AMANN, CHARLOTTE HAUNHORST, UDO LUDWIG, MAXIMILIAN POPP, SANDRA SCHULZ, ANDREAS ULRICH AND BERNHARD ZAND
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Source – Der Spiegel, published October 17, 2012

In recent years, China has become a major food supplier to Europe. But the low-cost goods are grown in an environment rife with pesticides and antibiotics, disproportionately cited for contamination and subject to an inspection regime full of holes. A recent norovirus outbreak in Germany has only heightened worries.

Qufu, the city in China’s southwestern Shandong Province where Confucius was born, isn’t exactly an attractive place. But its fields are as good as gold. A few weeks ago, a shipment of strawberries left those fields bound for Germany.

The air above the cities of the Chinese heartland is blackened with smog, as trucks barrel along freshly paved roads carrying loads of coal from the mines or iron girders from the region’s smelters. Fields stretch to the horizon, producing food to feed the world’s most populous country.
The chili pepper and cotton harvests have just ended, the rice harvest begins in two weeks, and garlic will be ready in April. Thousands of female farm workers are kneeling in the fields planting the next crop of a particularly profitable plant in the international food business.

“Garlic is eaten everywhere,” says Wu Xiuqin, 30, the sales director at an agricultural business called “Success.” “We sell garlic all over the world, and increasingly to Germany.” The going price of a ton of white garlic is currently $1,200 (€920). The Germans, says Wu, insist on “pure white” product, and they want the garlic individually packaged.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Corruption, Domestic Growth, Economics, Food, Germany, Government & Policy, Health, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade

March 4, 2013 • 10:10 pm 0

HK baby formula limit further strains mainland ties [Global Times] #China #Trust

To feed China’s next generation that can sustain’s China’s rise is an important one. They overlooked what it would mean if they got it so wrong managing domestic milk production. The few Gen Y middle income earner Chinese I know find this distressing, that they would have to look overseas to find this fundamental need – milk for their little ones, and not locally…

This is a big thing to get fixed, but it must. Most poignant of all…

Unless the mainland dairy industry can comprehensively restore consumer confidence, Hong Kong, a region of 7 million, will face continuous challenges satisfying the demand of the mainland’s 1.3 billion.

Anyone see opportunity?

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HK baby formula limit further strains mainland ties
By Guan Yan
Source – Global Times, published March 4, 2013

In a free market, price hikes driven by soaring demand are supposedly a positive sign. But Hong Kong’s recent shortage of baby milk formula, caused by soaring demand from mainland consumers, has become a serious political issue for the special administrative region’s government and strained relations between Hong Kong and the mainland.

A regulation that took effect on March 1 imposes a two-can limit on baby formula taken by individuals from Hong Kong to the mainland. Violators face imprisonment and a fine. By Sunday, 45 smugglers – 26 from Hong Kong and 19 from the mainland – were caught by customs inspectors.

The baby formula limit further tests Hong Kong-mainland ties already strained by pregnant mainland women taking up medical resources and mainland property investors pushing up local real estate prices. It also puts Hong Kong, a free trade hub, in a dilemma as to whether its baby formula limit goes against free market principles.

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Filed under: Chinese Model, Domestic Growth, Economics, Government & Policy, Health, Influence, Modernisation, People, Politics, Strategy, The Chinese Identity

February 26, 2013 • 12:00 am 0

Int’l shortage sees Chinese nurses in high demand [Global Times] #China #Health #CharmOffensive

Chinese nurses as a next phase in the Chinese public diplomacy toolbox as global interdependence increases.

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Int’l shortage sees Chinese nurses in high demand
By Lin Meilian
Source – Global Times, published February 25, 2012

Source – Global Times An instructor inspects nurses’ outfits during a training session at a training base of the PLA General Hospital in Beijing. Photo: CFP

In the near future, maybe as soon as September, elderly people in Germany will be treated by the first batch of foreign nurses sent from China, greeting them in German with a Chinese accent.

German labor authorities and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce signed an agreement at the end of last year to send about 150 Chinese nurses to work in German care homes, aiming to help plug a shortfall of medical personnel in the country.

“It is an exception to our usual recruitment as our partner in such a specific field this time, China, is not a European country,” said Beate Raabe, press officer of the Federal Employment Agency, the largest service provider in the German labor market.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Chinese overseas, Economics, Education, Germany, Health, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Migrant Workers, Public Diplomacy, Social, Soft Power, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities

February 22, 2013 • 9:53 am 0

One fly per square metre- – - China mulls hygiene standards for public restrooms [Xinhua] #China #Civilized #Hygiene

Toilet reform: Wow, what a standard to set. Does this take the step to civilization a fly too far on steroids? I found clean public toilets rare during my travels, but this was no fault of the cleaners. The culture of toilet use is probably where attention should be.

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China mulls hygiene standards for public restrooms
Source – Xinhua, published February 21, 2013

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) — Health authorities have issued a draft regulation that sets standards for public toilets, including limits for odor intensity and the number of flies and maggots.

The draft also sets requirements for the design, layout, construction and daily management of public toilets.

According to the rules, toilets attached to other buildings should contain no more than one fly per square meter. For independent public toilets, each square meter should contain no more than three flies.

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Filed under: Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Culture, Domestic Growth, Government & Policy, Health, People, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, The Chinese Identity

December 27, 2012 • 3:47 am 0

One-child policy linked to China’s diabetes epidemic [The Age] #China #Diabetes #OneChild

Bloomerg, in the Age: China’s growing first world problem argued to be linked to its one child policy, and the growing pains of the Great Leap Forward. In one generation diets have no doubt changed dramatically.

The prevalence of diabetes in China, a nation of 1.34 billion people, is 8.8 per cent. The U.S. has a diabetes prevalence of 9.3 per cent and 24.1 million sufferers, according to federation estimates released last month.

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One-child policy linked to China’s diabetes epidemic
Bloomberg
Source – The Age, published December 24, 2012

Rising tide of diabetes … obese children participate in a tug-of-war at a boot camp in Shenyang, in northeastern China. Source – The Age, 2012

BEIJING: Diabetes in China, already a greater burden than in any other country, is probably being exacerbated by its one-child policy.

About 100 million families have just one child, the Chinese government says. That translates into an equal number of first borns, a status that researchers are finding may be tied to conditions that raise obesity risk, said Chong Yap Seng, a scientist at Singapore’s National University Hospital.

Chong and colleagues in Beijing and Southampton, England, are studying the biological mechanisms that have conspired with diet and lifestyle changes to produce 92.3 million diabetics in China, almost four times as many as in the United States.

Please click here to read the rest of the article at the source.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Chinese Model, Domestic Growth, Economics, Environment, Government & Policy, Health, Lifestyle, People, Population, Social, The Chinese Identity, China's Rise, Health

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Wandering China

Rat Meat Sold as Lamb Highlights Fear in China [New York Times] #RisingChina #FoodSafety

Shanghai starts culling fowl [China Daily] #China #BirdFlu2013

3 Daily Chinese Headlines on Rising China [WanderingChina05042013] #RisingChina

You Get What You Pay For’: The Hidden Price of Food from China [Spiegel Online] #China #Food

HK baby formula limit further strains mainland ties [Global Times] #China #Trust

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