Shandong

Post in Travel，
02 July 2011
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I’ve never done a beach holiday on the mainland until this week. We came for four days with family friends (and a dog we are sitting) to the coast to a city called Haiyang which… well, was quite remarkable honestly. It confounded my expectations and was a pretty amazing week. The hotel we stayed was comfortable and clean, there was no constant soliciting of any kind, and the beach was well kept, well developed, and most importantly – not full of rubbish.

Haiyang will be the host of the 2012 Asian Beach Games next year and is being groomed in preparation but apart from us and a few hundred guests, the facilities could comfortably house thousands, so it felt like a ghost town and unusually eerie. Where does the capital come from for the investment for facilities that are, and will be under-utilized?

On the road again…

Post in Travel，
15 June 2011
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We are in Beijing this month. After the Red Cross Hospital experience we decided to return to familiar haunts to have our fourth (and final) child in the capital. I have many thoughts observing Beijing with the objectivity of over a year away from being its citizen. Its a rich city – but not as wealthy as Shanghai. I was at a conference in early April and they stated this stat (where from I don’t know) but the average GDP/person in Shanghai is now greater than that of Manchester in the UK, or many parts of the mid-west rural areas. Its true. It felt like you would get a free iPad with your happy meal in McDonalds. Free wireless in Shanghai airport and international news on the stands – from western China to this left me literally with a sense of culture shock.

The main point of this post is to muse about the new registration plate rules in Beijing (and potentially provide any helpful information for foreigners driving from the waidi to the city). We drove the 2000kms across the country again to be here, this time via the beautiful Xian and a questionable guest house just south of Lanfang. We had to camp there the night because of the new regulations. If your car number plate is from outside of Beijing you require a permit to drive into the district. Even then you are banned from driving within the 5th ring from 7-9am and 5-8pm (but who would want to anyway these days) plus the one day in a working week that all Beijing drivers must observe. We stupidly assumed we could get a permit for the whole time we would be here – but no. Just for a week at a time. So our time in Beijing means seven trips outside the district just to be here (and Beijing district is the size of Belgium). Its crazy and not so crazy. The roads are now the equivalent of blocked arteries and I wonder when Beijing will have its traffic heart attack. Even at 11pm roads once empty are now jammed up.

Civil Society and Non Profits in China

Post in Civil Society，
22 April 2011
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I have worked in the non-profit sector in China for 12 years… its still a mystery, confusing, and time consuming to figure out how to navigate the logistical and legal waters to have an entity that is sufficiently enabled to execute the objectives and mission of the organization. Why is this so, and how can it be done?

There are policy guidelines in place from yesteryear and a whole new push in 2003 that lead to international organizations actually getting ‘charity’ status for a period of months in that window. But with no real institutional framework agreed to help both the organizations themselves, and the bureau’s who were given responsibility to manage them – given registrations were retracted and new applications rejected – except those mega-money organizations that had the financial clout to broker agreements with a zhuguan danwei, or overseeing agency. Civil society is not a sector with long history in China. Until the iron rice bowl was broken and the market filled the void, Government was the legitimate answer to everything. But in the 21st Century this sector is beginning to gain traction which means legislative change will come…

A killer issue is understandably the political agenda some international organizations come with. I wouldn’t blame any country for blocking groups with an agenda that could cause social harm, but sadly the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. So much so some of the most influential and creative platforms for generating positive and beneficial social change also have had to leave. Nevertheless, many organizations have found alternative options to retain a presence and program in the country by using alternative channels that are increasingly becoming restrictive, but still available all the same.

Another issue, and biggest question mooted these days is why? Why should China get foreign aid or support, it’s invested over $300 billion dollars in Africa over the last decade…. and its a valid question. But also from the Chinese side I also wonder how foreign aid/intervention is looked upon…. how would a community in rural northern England take to being told what to do, or having participatory assessments with Chinese organizations seeking to make a change? I think these are valid questions at an advocacy level but equally tap the philosophical foundations and assumptions on which our ‘development’ takes place.

Rumors abound of new laws and mechanisms for local and international organizations to register as civil society or non-profit organizations. Indeed pilot programs are under trial for national roll out in years to come. Alternative measures are also emerging in locations like Shenzhen where retired officials are acting as conduits through which local organizations can register and then operate. As these registration mechanisms are rolled out existing back channels are being closed forcing groups into the governments choice, and in their pool the requirements are high.

In a journey that has been long, no clear catch-all path yet is evident. Eventually it will be, but not for some time. Ultimately we live and work in a country based on relationships and where they are fostered well – doors always open.

The Red Cross Hospital

Post in Health Care，Tags:
20 March 2011
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This week my wife has been to the hospital seven times. We are expecting our fourth child in July and while our three boys were all born in Beijing (two of those were in an international cocoon, and the third in a part international-part local institute) the Red Cross Hospital was a totally different experience, heaving, with confused and bewildered sick people.

Our city is a mix of Chinese, Muslim Hui, and Tibetans and just a small walk through one of the hospital halls is a cross section of one of the poorest provinces in China and if it were a country in its own right, across all of Asia. So our white faces, despite a number of international staff working there, caused considerable ‘gossip material’. Where a pre-natal check up usually takes a couple of hours in one session, blood tests can be done on Tuesdays, scan’s on Thursdays, the blood tests that were forgotten on Fridays, and all tests picked up between 4 and 5pm on the day of the test. Six trips – plus the initial check up – all about two to three hours in length.

On the one hand this is life here. Nothing can be done in one go. Even shopping takes about six/seven hours a week and paying the gas bill, electricity, water or telephone/internet each requires a good hour or so wait in the bank every month. What strikes me about it is the sheer inefficiency of it all. What if it could be done on the internet, what if a supermarket figured out it could do a ‘catch-all’ now that more people have cars and reduce the amount of time its customers expended feeding, clothing, and cleaning themselves, and what if our local hospital figured out it could clear its halls of those lost and confused TB patients coughing over everyone else and streamline its services?

On the one hand, the experience this week just cost $60US for full blood work, scan, urine test… where Beijing cost us several hundred. Even that price is extremely high for our fellow patients however, so the systemic inefficiency and low salaries received by the staff (that doesn’t motivate helpfulness, or desire to get a job done) seems set to remain unchanged. Either way we are going to Beijing again to have our baby.

China and the West

Post in Culture，
05 March 2011
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I got published this week in the International Leadership Journal with an article about how Confucian values can influence and shape how people in Asia respond to and provide leadership. It was originally a paper for college so I had limited space to argue how really those theoretical ‘categories’ are extremely limiting and really don’t explain everything… the paper tries to draw that out too – for example one study shows how Beijing University students are far more individualistic than their Manhattan counterparts. So its not all black and white, or so easily packaged into a box. Life is more complicated.

I think it would be so good to write further, or have Chinese friends write from their perspectives on Western individualism, or desire not to offend, conflict averse egalitarianism. Same issues but from a different perspective. Anyway – if you get time – read the article and argue back.

Speeding Ticket

Post in Travel，
04 December 2010
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Living in China never fails to surprise, leaving me somewhere between bemused and irritated. This week I checked online to find our car had a speeding ticket. My friend was driving the car at the time so its happily his ticket and his fine – however, its not his hassle paying the thing. We went to the police together this week to clear the fine. The kind lady in the office directed us elsewhere, even though she could show us on the system (even a nice picture of the car at 126km/h) we couldn’t pay the fine at that office. So we went to the next place where again, they showed us the same information, but couldn’t accept the money for the fine their either. It turns out we have to drive to the area traffic police station where the fine was recorded – about 60 kms away. The system is clearly centralized, but the payment must be made locally. I asked if we had gotten a ticket in Yushu (a town some 700 kms away) would we have to return there to pay the fine? Yes – they answered. Amazing…

iPhone 4 woes

Post in iPhone，Tags: ,
13 November 2010
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Last November I bought an iPhone 3GS in Zhong Guan Cun. It exploded this summer. I took it to the Apple Store in Sanlitun and they checked the ID code. The phone had been purchased in America, returned faulty, and sold to me on the grey market in Beijing’s technical zone. I felt totally stupid… but at that time you couldn’t buy the phone at the Apple Store in China and when it eventually was released they had to gut out the wireless from the phone.

But in October the iPhone 4 was released legally in China through Apple Stores across the country. This makes me very happy for one – it squarely stuffs the crooks that have profiteered of the legal wrangling between Apple and some bureau in China and I can now get one without wondering if i’ve been taken for a ride… again.

Or so I thought.

I went to Apple, but had to first get an appointment online because of the huge demand for the phone. I tried that. Poised at midnight (i found this to be the time the site was updated for appointments on the next day) the site crashed… i tried the next day… it crashed again… too much demand… I passed the store and asked if there was any way to get a phone. But no, 12 security guards in suits were protecting the stairs to the hallowed floor of iPhone 4. So now I wait wondering if I will ever manage to navigate the difficulties of getting this phone in China.

It’s forced me to reflect on the symbolic change iPhone 4 signals for China. First its an icon of 21st Century individualism and its phenomenally popular in a country considered to be philosophically and traditionally Confucian. Its a perfect product that signals a huge shift over the last 30 years. Secondly, a lot of Beijingers are just plain wealthy (even though the migrant slums cling to the edges of the city). The lack of credit facilities means the cash being paid out for each phone is saved money – where I would bet a fair amount of the phones bought in the West are paid for on the plastic. It makes me realize, how when I first came to China it was pretty poor comparatively, and now – well, its very very different.

Soviet Railways

Post in Travel，Tags:
24 October 2010
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I am leaving China tonight for Mongolia. Its 11.20pm and I am being ferried back and forth while they change the wheels underneath the train. They’ve taken our passports and we have taken off so i’m also feeling a little nervous. I can’t even remember the cold war but I am currently in a process that is a relic of the epic struggle which my parents lived through as a normal part of their lives as we do the threats of our day. The gauge between the wheels was made wider in the ex-Soviet satellites to protect against invasion. Given the two hours we have been ping-ponged between the borders of no-mans land it appears an effective strategy. It strikes me as amazing that from this point to the borders of Europe the region was connected by an ideology that is now long gone yet the remnants and hangovers remain. Who says ideas don’t have consequences? Karl Marx wrote a few ideas down in the British Museum’s library and I just spent two hours of my life watching the first snow of winter fall.

Language

Post in Language，Tags:
15 October 2010
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In 2050 a significant amount of spoken English will include Chinese. “Long Time No See” is a perfect example of the influence of Chinese on English. Soon the number of people that speak English as a second language will outnumber those who speak it as a first giving rise to the Singlish or Chinglish for which China is so famed. Our local police station where we have to register our residency each year has an “Inside Job Office” and the train on which I now write from has a sign above the sink saying “Don’t throw odds and ends into the pond”. While I can laugh on the one hand the other tells me that another change is coming as China ever relentlessly becomes increasingly influential across the globe. I guess my point is this – learn Chinese. Its worth it if you are going to make sense of the world in 30 years time.

Education and Philanthropy

Post in Education, Philanthropy，Tags: ,
07 October 2010
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It was with great excitement that I read in the China Daily last Thursday that the Education Bureau have decided to create fund for students from poor backgrounds to continue their education into Senior High. Usually many kids just stop because their families are unable to cover the costs. Only just three years ago was primary and secondary school fully supported by the government so this continuing progressive change points to greater coverage in years to come. I’m encouraged because an organization I worked for several years, continues to support those kids in remote townships in the back of beyond where the average income for many is well below the UN’s poverty line. Universal coverage is still a dream, and even with primary and secondary school fees provided the struggle is then to find money for textbooks, food, and if the kid needs to board, the school living fees.

The front page of the edition had a picture of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They were in Beijing the night before to persuade China’s Billionaires to join their philanthropic drive to give away their money. This is interesting because business is a language that China understands and the civil society sector, especially foreign organizations, is viewed with a thinly veiled suspicion. China is poised for a coming change where the fatigue of relentless development gives way to a more socially driven sense that corporate business becomes the predominant funder of development, both within and beyond the borders of China. Where 1 in 5 graduates in Beijing want to work for NGO (and there aren’t that many to work for) the creative entrepreneurs among them build their own organizations and obtain the funds that companies like Nokia, Motorola, Hai’er, or Yingu Solar are willing to give – this at a time where the international donor community are rightfully retreating from the country.

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