Health Care during the Mao era

August 14, 2012

After the Chinese Communists (CCP) won the Civil war in 1949, health care improved in China. Prior to that, life expectancy for the average Chinese was thirty-five years. By Mao’s death in 1976, average life expectancy had increased by twenty years so the program worked.

In fact, the CCP was the first government in China’s history to set goals and plans to help its people living in poverty improve the quality of their lifestyles.  For example, soon after Mao Zedong’s healthcare speech in 1965, the concept of the barefoot doctor (with basic paramedical training) was developed. By 1968, the barefoot doctors program was a national policy.

The barefoot doctor program came to an end in 1981 with the end of the commune system of agricultural cooperatives. However, two-thirds of rural village doctors currently practicing in China were first trained as barefoot doctors

Under the barefot doctor program, there were three basic areas of medical care. Free substandard medical care was provided to the proletarian working class, meaning workers and peasants.

This program was the backbone of rural-health care in China, and anyone could become a barefoot doctor.

Mao told the people that if you wanted to be a doctor, you didn’t need to go to medical school. All you had to do was have the motivation to provide medical care to needy people and the government would support you and provide limited training.

The second class of medical care went to people like teachers, clerks and secretaries, ‘friends’ of the working class, the proletariat. The only difference was that the ‘friends’ had to pay to get medical treatment. It was possible to face financial ruin from one hospital stay.

The third class were considered enemies of the proletariat like former shop-owners, landlords and denounced intellectuals like liberal arts professors. These people were denied health care treatment altogether.

Then, between 1981 and 2003, the health care system in China was privatized, which meant people had to pay before treatment or no treatment. This changed in 2003, when the CCP launched a new cooperative medical system operated and funded by the government with copay of 10 Renminbi per year for each person covered by the program.

Discover China’s Urban Rural Divide

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Note: This revised and edited post first appeared February 27, 2010

 

6 Comments | China, Chinese history, Communism, government, health care, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Oprah Times Four in China

August 13, 2012

Oprah may have retired in America, but her Chinese counterparts are still at work with a combined audience approaching one billion people.

After doing research for this post, I thought, how could these four Chinese women be compared to Oprah when her average US audience was a little more than 7 million? Source: Answers.com

The four women I discovered in China that have been described as an Oprah are Chen Luyu, Yue-sai Khan, Hung Huang, and Yang Lan.

I’ve written about Luyu before at You’ve Come a Long Ways, Babe.

Luyu’s audience in China averages 140 million. Her show is called A Date With Luyu, which tackles issues that traditionally have been censored by Chinese media officials. The show’s guests have included people who are HIV-positive, lesbians and transsexuals.

Of Yue-sai Kan, The Conversation: The Most Famous Woman in China says she is a journalist, television host, entrepreneur and author and has been a key figure in modern Chinese culture for 20 years. About 300 million Chinese watch her show.

People Magazine called Yue-sai Kan the most famous woman in China. Money Magazine described her as a Modern Day Marco Polo.

After Kan hosted a live broadcast from China in 1984 for PBS, China’s government asked her to produce One World, the first television series ever produced and hosted by an American on China’s only national network, CCTV. Source: Women of China

The next Chinese Oprah is Hong Huang, who hosts a TV show called Crossing Over. Huang’s mother was Mao Zedong’s English teacher. She was sent to the U.S. for an education as a teenager and returned to become one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Chinese print media.

Hung Huang is the chief executive of the China Interactive Media Group and publishes fashion magazines such as I Look, Time Out and Seventeen. Her Blog, which has an audience of about 15 million, is one of China’s most popular and continues to be one of the top five on Sina.com.

The fourth Chinese Oprah I discovered was Yang Lan, who rose to fame as the host of the Zheng Da Variety Show, which often has an audience of 200 million viewers.

In the following YouTube video clip, Yang Lan talks about how Chinese women are making their mark on China’s future.

She says the younger generation in China is turning away from television and using the Internet for entertainment and information.

If you do the math, you will discover that these four Chinese Oprahs reach an audience of about 700 million compared to America’s Oprah, which had an average audience of seven million when she was still on the air.

Maybe the US Oprah’s claim to fame is because she was the first one, and it has nothing to do with the size of the audience. Did you notice that all of these Chinese Oprahs speak excellent English? I am sure that America’s Oprah doesn’t speak Mandarin.

Now that the US Oprah is gone, her audience may want to see if they can switch to one of China’s four Oprahs.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Note: This revised and edited post first appeared on November 24, 2010

1 Comment | America, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, Communism, media | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The First Cinderella was Chinese

August 7, 2012

Since I wrote about rural children living alone yesterday, I thought I’d write about a fairy tale today and let you know that the first known literary version of Cinderella in the world was published in China.

There is a myth that an earlier version existed in Egypt around the first century. If true, since Egypt did not have printing presses then, this may have been an oral story told around camp fires.

However, in 850 AD during the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese version of Cinderella was about a girl called Yeh-hsien. Source: Tales of Faerie

Although this video claims the Chinese Cinderella had bound feet, according to Bound Feet Women, foot binding didn’t appear in China until the Sung Dynasty (960-1276 AD), more than a century after Cinderella was first published.

The French version of Cinderella wouldn’t be published by Charles Perrault until 1697 — more than eight centuries later.

Another version of Cinderella would appear in 1867 and again in 1894 in England.

In 1945, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow would present the premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet of Cinderella.

Walt Disney wouldn’t publish a version of Cinderella until 1946, more than a thousand years after Cinderella first appeared in China.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Note: This edited post first appeared December 23, 2010

2 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, history | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Beyond Latchkey Kids

August 6, 2012

In rural China, more than 100 million migrants have left their homes to find work in the cities. By 2025, it is predicted that another 243 million will migrate. The benefit for these rural to urban migrants is increased income, access to education and a higher standard of living.

However, not all have the money to take their children with them. Some children stay behind — alone.

“Researchers estimate that at least 58 million — nearly a quarter of the nation’s children and almost a third of its rural children — are growing up without one or both of their parents, who have migrated in search of work. More than half of those were left by both parents.” Source: Rural Life in China

In the US, we call such children Latchkey Kids. In fact, Jareb Collins at Associated Content says as many as 77 percent of American youth are Latchkey Kids. If accurate, that adds up to more than 57 million American children.

In addition, in 2009, there were about 18.1 million children in the United States living in single-mother families. Source: prb.org

In the video, Xie Xiang Ling is one of those children in China that lives alone. She is twelve and tells her story to Al Jazeera.

Ling says she lives alone in rural Anhui Province.

Her parents work in the city and she takes care of herself. Sometimes her parents come home on the weekend and sometimes are gone for months.

Ling said there are too many people in the city where her parents sell fruit, tea and nuts.

When Ling visited her parents in the city, she had trouble sleeping nights because the city is so loud and there are so many cars.

Back home, Ling does her own cooking and eats fruit.

At times, she helps on her aunt’s farm and pulls the vegetables from the ground.

In school, she loves language class and math but does not like the English class since the teacher always screams at the students.

Ling wants to go to college and earn good money but her family cannot afford to send her to college.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
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Note: This revised and edited post first appeared December 30, 2010

1 Comment | business, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, economy, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

August 3, 2012

Innocent until proven guilty — I agree.

 

I’ll bet that not many people know that thanks to all the Olympic gold, silver and bronze he has won, Michael Phelps is worth about $45 million through good old capitalist endorsements. Now that China is a hybrid/ capitalist/sort-of-socialist country, I wonder if Ye Shewin will find endorsements lining up for the Chinese market. If so and she soon finds herself worth millions, what can we expect the Western media to say about her?
In fact, I read that Gabby Douglas’ London gold may be worth as much as $10 million in the next four years through endorsements.

seniledelinquent's avatarSenile Delinquent's Blog

When 16 year old Ye Shewin of China won the gold medal for the 400 m Individual Medley in London, it didn’t take long for the doubters to crawl out of the woodwork. John Leonard, executive director of the USA Swimming Coaches Association told the Guardian newspaper that her record breaking performance was “disturbing” and “suspicious”. Other athletes and officials climbed in, saying her performance was “interesting” (meaning I can’t prove it, but I know she cheated), or “insane” ( as in if you think she did this on her own, you’re crazy). What made her swim more amazing was that in the final 50m of her event, she swam faster than Ryan Lochte did in his gold medal performance at the same event.

So, reading between the lines of these comments you come up with these arguments. Firstly she’s a girl, and how can a 16 year old, 5’7″girl…

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2 Comments | China | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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