Deadly Fat Profits

July 24, 2010

CNNMoney.com reports in China: The new fast food nation, that Yum Brand, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has seen its profits in China jump 33% in the second quarter.… In fact, American fast food is very popular in China.  Yum opens one new KFC every day in China with nearly 3,000 and a long-term goal to have 20,000 fast-food outlets in Chinese cities.

Keeping pace with fast food consumption is the increase in obesity, diabetes and cancer rates in China.  Bullfax.com reports that the growing popularity of Western junk food is fueling a diabetes boom across Asia. In fact, China is facing a diabetes epidemic and 92 million Chinese men and women have diabetes and almost 150 million more are close to having it.

CBS News reports that China’s soaring cancer rates appear to be keeping pace with the increase in urban Chinese eating Western fast food. When Deng Xiaoping said, “Getting rich is glorious,” did he mean that business people should become parasites causing this to happen?

See The Challenge of Rural Health Care in America and China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Challenge of Rural Health Care in America and China

July 7, 2010

This morning, I read in the AARP Bulletin about small town medicine in the US aptly titled Lonesome Doc.  I learned that 77 million Americans (more than 25% of the population) living in rural areas have 10% of the doctors and that a 2008 study found life expectancies are declining in rural America.  Many doctors will not work in rural America where primary care doctors make about $20,000 a year less than their big-city counterparts.

China has similar challenges with rural health care. In 2009, The Journal of International Relations reported that in China “low-end institutions, particularly the rural township hospitals and community hospitals in the cities are gradually shrinking. More than 87% of rural population was without any health insurance.…When rural low income people need to go to the hospital, 70 to 90% choose self care.”

Then near the end of 2009, China’s central government announced a new five-year plan to improve the quality of life for rural citizens. The New Health Care Bill Facts reported “The (Chinese) government decision to improve healthcare infrastructure in rural areas will result in increasing demand of medical devices and equipment.”

China also recently sent a team to Sweden to learn how chronic diseases are managed there since China, with its ageing population, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of chronic disease cases.”

I wondered what the US was doing to improve rural-health care.  I did read that primary-care doctors coming out of college would have student loans forgiven if they work in rural America. After all, this is America where we trust in the private sector to solve everything as long as the money is there.

See China’s Health Care During Mao’s Time

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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Stuck on a Name

June 30, 2010

Dave left this comment for a post on the China Law Blog: “The country (China) is ruled by an organization called “The Communist Party” claiming fealty to the teachings of the German Karl Marx and organizationally based on the teachings of the Russian Lenin.” Source of comment: China Law Blog

Think again, Dave. After Mao died and Deng Xiaoping declared, “Getting rich was glorious”, Marxism and Lenin went in the trash with Maoism. In fact, China is a mixture of capitalism and socialism and the socialism is shrinking.

Check out medical care in China. Soon after Mao died, the cradle to grave socialist system of medicine went into the rubbish. It’s cash, baby, or have a nice death. Along with the state-run hospitals, a growing and very expense private medical system caters to rich expatriates and wealthy Chinese.

In fact, in 2004, there were almost 2 million privately owned enterprises in China. The number of individually owned businesses stood at more than 39 million primarily concentrated in such areas as wholesale and retail, manufacturing and industrial, transport, personal services, and lodging and restaurants. Source: Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry, IAA

Soon after 1976, China’s government revised the Chinese Constitution imposing term limits (2 five-year terms) for public office and an age limit (67), something we don’t have in the US. Granted, China still has a one party system but regional governments don’t always listen to Beijing. China is a “Communist” nation in word only.

See Dictatorship Defined

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Lloyd Lofthouse,
Award winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Getting Rich is Glorious vs. China’s Health Care System

June 26, 2010

Until reading this post from “Danwei”, I didn’t know that medical vultures had landed in China to drain ignorant people’s bank accounts as in the US. When in China, my family, friends and I have always used the domestic health care system when needed and we have no complaints.

“Danwei’s” post, China’s private healthcare racket, offers a warning to stay away from the private clinics that have appeared over the past 15 years. “The desire to grind out as much profit as possible from patients means that China is now one of the most expensive places in the world to have private healthcare.…

“Most companies coming to China simply adopted United States-style pricing, given the company packages and generous medical insurance that were standard for their clients, wealthy expatriates.”

The red cross indicates this high rise in Shanghai is a hospital and looks similar to ones we've been to in China.

Here are a few comparative costs between China’s domestic health care (not private) and the US. A urine test in the US cost us $267—in China, that cost was 20 yuan or about $3.  To see a US doctor cost us $185—in China, the cost was 15 yuan or about $2.  In the US, we had to wait a week or longer for the lab results—that is if we were even called. In China, the results were back in less than half-an-hour.

If you are planning to travel to China, read Danwei’s post about private health care and use the domestic system. Learn the facts and save some money.

See China’s Health Care Today

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning concubine saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you also marry her family and culture.

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China’s Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1961) – Part 2 of 6

June 22, 2010

Mao has more power than anyone since the emperors, and he wants China to be a purer, fairer more progressive state than the Soviet Union, so the peasants were the first to benefit.

As promised during the revolution, there were land reforms. Luo Shifa, a party official in Sichuan, tells his story about what happened in 1950.  Rural landlords were judged enemies of the people and hundreds of thousands were executed.

Changes in urban areas were not as violent. The owners and managers of factories were needed to keep things running but all property was signed over to the state.  Factory and business owners  who resisted were executed.

Women were given new rights at work and in marriage and foot binding was abolished. Literacy was also important. Before 1949, illiteracy in Mainland China was 80% and life expectancy was 35.  When May died, only 7% were illiterate and the average life expectancy had increased to 55—today it is 76.

To deal with disease, the Communists launched programs to improve health care that had never existed before. Millions were inoculated against the most common diseases.

Return to Part 1, China’s Great Leap Forward or go to Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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