Health Care, Urban Real Estate and Renewable Energy Update

March 9, 2010

Rural citizens of China have been protesting the lack of quality health care outside the cities where eight hundred million Chinese live. This topic was also a subject for debate in China’s legislature, known as the National People’s Congress. (see Basic Health Care in China (http://wp.me/pN4pY-bO)

Another complaint China’s government wants to deal with is the shocking price increases to buy a home in one of China’s cities. Housing costs in seventy Chinese cities jumped 9.5% from a year earlier. The government wants to bring those prices down to make housing more affordable.

During the Copenhagen Climate Summit, China was criticized for not signing a pledge to reduce carbon emissions. China recently announced that it is planning to reduce its carbon footprint by 40-45% (from 2005 levels) and generate 15% of its electricity from renewable technologies by 2020. Over the next ten years, we should see these changes taking place. Since most of China’s leaders are engineers, they often set long-term goals.

Chinese Wind Farms

By comparison, President Obama said at Copenhagen that the United States intended to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17% by 2020.  Since the Chinese government doesn’t have to deal with American conservatives, who do not believe carbon emissions are causing global warming and block legislation and spew confusion at every chance, I’d place my bet on China achieving their goals first.

1 Comment | business, China, economy, environment, government, health care, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

All About Balance

March 8, 2010

 On my last flight to China on United Airlines, I got sick from the food. I knew airline food is often horrible, but I was an idiot and ate anyway.

After landing in China, I went to a Chinese pharmacy for help.  The Shanghai pharmacist took an American medicine for diarrhea off the shelf. I said no. She looked surprised.

“Give me Chinese medicine. Western medicine does too much damage to the body.” 

She smiled and looked impressed. “He knows,” she said. “You do know that the Chinese medicine will take longer to heal you.”

I know that Yin and Yang underlie all aspects of Chinese philosophy and medicine. I know that the Chinese believe in balance so the body remains healthy.  That’s one of the reasons you often see Chinese up early in the morning doing Tai Chi in parks. Maintaining health is more than eating properly. It also includes exercise. That doesn’t mean everyone in China follows the philosophy of Yin and Yang.

Tai Chi

Western medicine, on the other hand, waits until the patient is sick—then uses drugs, many that are dangerous, surgery, chemicals and radiation to try to fix things often with side effects that are worse than the disease.

Discover Attitudes Toward Health in 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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Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, food, health care | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

One Child

March 7, 2010

China’s one-child policy is due to a population of 1.3 billion people in a country where food crops may be grown on only sixteen percent of the land. What isn’t well known is that the one-child policy applies only to the Han majority. That policy does not apply to the hundred million people that belong to the fifty-six minorities in China. That means Tibetans may not be able to worship and maintain the feudal, nomadic lifestyle like they had before Mao’s reoccupation of Tibet in 1951, but they can have as many children as they want.

Crowded China

The biggest challenge is growing enough food to feed the bulging Chinese population of 1.3 billion people.  The Chinese government says if it weren’t for the one-child policy, there would be another four-hundred million mouths to feed and provide shelter for.

Meanwhile, Christians in the West (people who believe abortion is wrong) criticize China for this policy. If China did not have the one-child policy, I doubt if these antiabortion voices would have stepped up to feed four-hundred million people. How many would have starved if a famine struck?

There are other exceptions to the one child policy, and you may read about them at the Asian Correspondent .

You may also learn more about China from Tom Carter’s Book, China: Portrait of a People

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. 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.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

2 Comments | China, Christianity, family values, food, health care, parenting, religion, Tibet | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Smoking Gun

March 5, 2010

The smoking gun I’m writing about in this post is complements of American tobacco companies earning huge profits in China. Isn’t the market-economy great?

Chinese child smoking

“Antismoking advocates often complain about smoking levels in Canada but our problems pale beside those of China, where it is estimated that 300 million people already smoke and more are being encouraged to do so by Western advertising. To its credit, the Chinese government is taking steps to discourage smoking as it prepares to host the 10th World Conference on Tobacco and Health in 1997. By 2025, smoking-related disease is expected to kill 2 million Chinese a year.” Source: CMAJ-JAMC

Big Tobacco in China

Yes, smoking is a problem in China. When we go out to eat, there will usually be people smoking in restaurants.  In cities, we use the subways, and I haven’t seen or smelled anyone smoking there.

When we travel in China, we often stay in a Jinjiang Inn, a chain of reasonably priced, modern, clean hotels that serve a complimentary breakfast. There are hundreds of Jinjiang inns in most if not all of China’s major cities. This chain caters primarily to the Chinese middle class or Asian business people.  Most foreign tourists stay in more expensive, upscale hotels.  We prefer the Jinjiang Inn.

However, even when we request a smoke-free room or floor, we often will smell drifting cigarette smoke coming from other rooms.

Bob Grant talks about the Chinese smoking in his guest post.

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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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2 Comments | America, business, China, health care, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Basic Health Care in China

March 1, 2010

Basic care in China does not include a stay in a hospital, which would cost about $100 a night compared to a thousand or more in America. Since the best doctors live in the major cities, the best-equipped hospitals are there too.

If a peasant living in the countryside becomes seriously ill, he may have to travel a long distance to get proper medical care. That is, if he has the money. Medical care in China is all about money just like in the United States. Money opens hospital doors and pays the rent for the surgeon’s scalpel.  To understand the challenges that come with living in China’s rural areas, I suggest reading this post on Mark’s China Blog.

Chinese pharmacy

However, when it comes to drugs, the Chinese government has factories in every province that manufactures drugs at a low cost. This is one commodity where the prices are controlled. For example, a bottle of antibiotics in the U.S. that costs $80 would cost $14 in China. That cost is still out of reach for many rural peasants living on an average hundred dollars a year (six or seven hundred yuan). 

Maybe Emperor Wudi from the Han Dyansty had the right idea when he decided that certain necessary commodities and services should not be part of the private market economy.

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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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