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Tuesday June 27, 2006

Robbed!

The World Cup has been progressing nicely for Australia - up until last night. With seconds left in the match a very dubious penalty was awarded to Italy that led to them scoring a winning goal.

Those referees may not be dressed in white, but our Australian name for them seems quite appropriate - WHITE MAGGOT!

I hope this great result for the Australian team and for Australia makes soccer a much more respected and played sport in Australia. Hopefully more ex-pats will choose to play for Australia too, in the future, rather than some other country. Unfortunately it is not a well recognised sport in Australia, so those with skills are poached by European teams and spend a large amount of their professional sporting life playing for teams in the FA cup, etc.

Thursday June 22, 2006

Smoke chokes Beijing

How to stop the smoke?

Beijing has a pollution problem. Part of that problem comes from burning off of straw in the provinces surrounding it. Officially this is banned, so the column says. If it is banned then someone should be out there enforcing the ban, not twiddling their thumbs and mumbling. No wonder I see so much flagrant violation of common law every day - nobody actually enforces anything apart from censorship of the media. Fine the farmers 3000 yuan if they get caught burning off, each time they get caught. Yes, that's a huge amount of money to them, but the consequences need to be severe or else they'll just ignore the rules - like they do now. If the farmers have low incomes and cannot afford to pay for other ways in which to dispose of the straw then I have some suggestions:

• 1. Increase the cost of whatever it is they sell so they make more money to use more expensive ways to dispose of straw
• 2. Government subsides the construction of alternative methods of disposing of straw

Beijing's problem is a problem for the world. Everyone needs to be looking at finding ways to cut greenhouse gasses. Burning straw and the pollution it puts in the atmosphere is a global problem and needs to be stopped. It is compounded in Beijing because of local conditions - both weather and geographical. If the worst comes to worst, just relocate the farmers and prohibit that kind of farming close to Beijing. As it stands now, 20,000,000 people or more suffer for days because nobody has helped these farmers find a better solution.

This column is almost laughable. It would seem that China is just starting to wake up to what it means to have competition and some of its employees, such as pilots, are learning that they don't have to put up with the poor living and pay conditions offered from working as a state employee. Well isn't that a shame? You know what we do in other places of the world to combat that? Increase working and living conditions and pay to be more competitive. That is the only real alternative here. Otherwise, when it comes time to train and become a pilot, the better pilots will always choose to work with the better - non-state run - airlines and the state-run airlines will become home to 2nd rate pilots. Would you choose to fly on a state-run airline if you knew that the pilots were 2nd class? Probably not. The real solution here is for the government to get out of the business of airlines and leave it to companies that are not state-run or state-backed and can respond to changing market conditions more rapidly and more appropriately than with contracts to lock in pilots for years and years. Such contracts could be far worse for China Eastern - if they lock pilots in and have poor contracts that do not let pilots escape if they want to, why would pilots want to work there to start with?

Wednesday June 21, 2006

Questionable English Exams

Inside the China daily today, and away from their front page, a story titled Questionable Exam looks at the problems in China regarding their English grading system. And you know what? I've seen the output of this process - CET grade 6 students who can have a lot of trouble understanding basic questions.

The story mentions that the exam system should be scrapped because students are just learning how to pass the exam. This is what happens in all places that you have standardised tests.

There is also another fundamental difference in what's going on here - there is a history of Chinese being taught what to know. That is what you are told is correct and you can't ask questions because there are no other answers. This critical thinking and questioning is what I would consider vital for any nation that aims to be involved in innovation. If China wants to become an innovation nation then it needs to change the way in which people are taught here, from when they are a young child, all the way through to university.

Tuesday June 20, 2006

China's Linux Firewall

A lot of public criticism is made of commercial companies for giving in and helping the Chinese Government or just acuqiescing to their requests without much (if any) resistance. But what about open source products and projects? Should those who build open source projects just turn a blind eye to their software being used to build this kind of infrastructure? If someone told Linus, today, that Linux was the foundation of the "Great Firewall of China", could be reasonably be expected to do anything except say, "yeah, so what?"

If the 3rd version of the GPL is going to include anti-DRM clauses, why can't it also include anti-censorship or otherwise forbid it being used against other certain morals that are widely held in the western world? But given the lack of respect by the Chinese for IPR, in general, would they even care if they violated the GPL?

Thursday June 15, 2006

Cyling in China

On Saturday the 10th of June, I went for a ride on my bike here in Beijing. My target was to reach the mountains to the north. The air was relatively clean - I could see the destination I was heading for (unlike if I was to do it today.) On the way out it was a rather extraordinary sight along the roads I took - there were green clothed police/army people along the road and at every intersection. At some intersections I passed, traffic was being held up and not going anywhere. It wasn't until maybe half an hour of travelling that I finally saw the reason why - a black car motorcade, complete with police escort, went zooming by.

The trip took me out of the city of Beijing and into some of the more rural areas around it. I passed through a town called "Shahe" and got close to the Ming Tombs before weather indicated it was time to turn around.

Anecdotes

In Beijing, when you buy a bike, you get just the bike - seat, wheels, tubes, chains, frame, etc. No accessory kit to repair tyres, etc. It simply isn't necessary as there are plenty of bicycle repair shops around. How much does it cost to get a puncture repaired? 1 RMB per hole. Oh, you may also get a basket on the front or pack rack on the back (for your girlfriend to sit on.)

So what did I carry with me on my trip out? Camera, top, money, keys. No water or food. Why not? China is relatively densely populated and the bike is still the preferred mode of transport for a lot of people. To support this, where we might have gas stations for people to fill up their cars, the Chinese have road-side stalls for you to get a soft drink or bottle of water from. On a hot day there is an added advantage: their drinks are kept in coolers and can be ice cold. This is a bonus in two ways: don't have to lug around drink and you get a cold drink, not a hot/warm drink. Food? Stop at a gas station or find a store close to the road and buy something. My preference is chocolate with nuts.

Defending bikes

There is a lot of misunderstanding and perhaps anger towards the cause of road traffic problems in China, causing articles such as this one about 'China urged to back-pedal on bikes' to be written. What I find most bewildering is that anyone who plans against or tries to ban bikes doesn't understand what the problem is because it isn't just bikes - it is also pedestrians.

How can this be? In Beijing, there are pedestrains in numbers at the corners of intersections for busy roads between the hours of 9am and 9pm in numbers that most westerners will never see. This alone isn't the problem. It is the attitude of both bike riders and pedestrians that is the cause of the problem (and cars too, to a lesser extent.) When it comes to crossing a road, everyone wants to get to the other side as quickly as they can - regardless of what the traffic lights say. For cars, this is a bit hard, so for the most part they respect the lights. But for cyclists and pedestrians, they have long worked out they are small enough and can move quickly enough, to execute a successful (partial) crossing before the lights change. I see this every day and it causes no end of headaches for drivers in the city.

One solution being adopted in Beijing is to employ minor traffic police that stand at each corner of an intersection. Sometimes there are 2 per corner - one for each direction of pedestrian traffic at each corner. They're equipped with whistles and red flags. Their job - to keep the cyclists and pedestrians in order and not to (attempt to) cross the road until the light is green for them to do so.

I'm almost convinced that this is a cultural problem, although what the root cause is defeats me. I see it in other parts of daily life in China too - people get in the lift and the first thing they do is push the "close door" button. Nobody wants to wait for others to get in (if they can help it.) I've seen this in the building I work in and in the buildings I've lived in. I see the same attitude with their subway/metro/trains - you have to push your way off a train, those getting on never stand back to let people off. Are all three issues different symptoms of the same problem? Or are they all different problems? Whatever the case, some of this (the train issue mostly) has forever changed the way I see Chinese people, en mass. But if the root of all three is the same and can be attacked, then maybe there will be fewer problems with bikes, pedestrians and cars on the roads in China, along with flow on effects of people being more considerate of others getting off trains too.

Tuesday June 13, 2006

China military exports

On the front page of China Daily today, an article appears titled 'Patience key to solve Iran nuke impasse'. This article is quite hard to find on their website. The Iran commentary is uninteresting but in a second section, under the same title, the author (Le Tian) comments on China selling arms (weapons - guns, helicopters, etc) to other countries around the world. What Le Tian doesn't mention is that what is being called for is greater accountability in China's export trade of arms. How would this help? To be more accountable means to be more open. By being more open it becomes easier for China to fight accusations by being able to point at facts rather than say "trust us". As for my position on arms sales, I'd refer you to a 2005 movie titled "Lord of War". It is said that the movie is in part based on fact. I believe it is an entertaining movie that is also educational. The sad part, in my eye, is it is all too believable. If you haven't seen it, watch it.

Whether it is by coincidence or not, China Daily today has two extra articles on guns - "China targets illegal explosives, guns" and "Crackdown to target illegal guns, explosives". So the sale of one gun can earn a farmer 3 times what he makes in a year on his farm. I think there are some very powerful incentives there to dabble in this field. Maybe a good way to help make selling illegal firearms less attractive would be for the Chinese government to subsidise farmers more. Of course this would need to come at some cost to the budget in China but wouldn't it be money well spent? That said, if there were 100,000,000 farmers at this wage level (not unbelievable in a country of 1,300,000,000), then the budget cost would be 200,000,000,000 RMB (200 billion RMB) or USD$25,000,000,000 (USD$25 billion). That's a lot of pennies in anyone's book.

Monday June 05, 2006

Fish die from pollution

The front page of China Daily today had a picture of pond filled with dead fish. The caption underneath mentioning that it was possibly caused by a near by factory and had an estimated loss of 300,000RMB. While that is only US$37,500, in local terms, a typical college student needs about 3,000RMB per month to survive. Enough to support 8 college students for a year.

The paper version doesn't expand on the picture, but online, there's an article "Pollution costs China US$200 billion every year."

Through China's lack of sufficient regulations and problems with local governments enforcing environment laws, China is rediscovering all of the problems western countries have been through rather than learning from our mistakes. This isn't the first time something like this has happened and it certainly won't be the last. Not until local governments are held accountable for their (in)ability to enforce local law will anything meaningfully transpire. Who has the power to put the boot into local governments in China? I'm not sure. If China's President can't do it and the NGO's can't do it, is it left up to the people? One hopes not. The local governments should be brought into line first and foremost by President Hu Jintao, although maybe this can't happen soon enough!

But as a developing nation, it should be prepared for ecological degradation to continue. Only when the environment and its ecology are put above profit in important will protection of the environment really be achieved. China's problem in all of this is that protecting the environment and being a green producer cost more money. That means factories are more expensive to build and goods cost more to make and buy. This will not please the overseas companies that come to China for cheap manufacturing.

( Jun 05 2006, 09:53:39 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Friday June 02, 2006

Air quality in Beijing

The Chinese Government convieniently provides a web page reporting the air quality in a number of major Chinese cities. What this web page doesn't tell is what it looks like outside. Today we have grade 3A air pollution with an index value of 112. The average visibility has been about 2 miles.

The last time I did any serious exercise outside was Saturday, when the pollution was "grade 1", with an index value of 32 (it was overcast in the morning with some light rain.) The exercise? 2-3 hour bike ride in the afternoon, after the rain stopped. The following day, Sunday, was our token blue-sky day for the week/fortnight, however, the air was not quite as clean.