China and Congress – Not Exactly a Love Affair

So, clearly I’m not anti-China. In fact, I’m very wary of painting China as the next, big, bogeyman. I don’t believe in simple solutions regarding trade, balance of power issues, or human rights. And, I think that it’s ridiculous to become locked in an “us” against “them” mentality.

This is a blog. Which means that I don’t engage in complex analyses here. That’s what good magazine and journal articles are for, or entire books. Rather, I engage in a form of hopefully thought-provoking commentary. With the understanding that the title of my blog says it all. Anyone who takes me or what I have to say too seriously does not understand the meaning of satire. Sometimes, I just like to be the opposing voice, because I find it productive. There’s a reason that the devil’s advocate has never gone out of fashion. Every time someone disagrees with me, it forces me to recalibrate what I think.

Oh, sure, I may get mad enough to spit nails, I might call someone a whiner, a douchebag, or an idiot (not necessarily to their faces). I might sulk for awhile. But eventually, when my mind clears, I’ll ponder why I got so mad about it in the first place. Did they have a point?

All of this is just a long introduction to the article below, and my admission that I do not hate China. I also do not purport to think that we could solve China’s problems with our own brand of “democracy”, whatever that means in an age of super delegates and government-business hand-holding. In fact, I don’t know how our own government would cope with having 5 or 6 times the population we have now. Can you imagine the state of things?

Anyway, I have been researching the instances of when and how China is brought up for discussion on the House and Senate floors. And here is what I can tell you: we are scared. Silly.

China is talked about as a threat, a cheater, a human rights abuser, an unfair competitor – almost in the same breath as it is talked about as a rising power, a world player, and our banker (China is one of the largest holders of our debt, in case you never read the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Economist, or any business section). We worry that China is graduating more engineers than us, that their students are better than ours, that they can speak English while most of us are completely in the dark about Chinese. We also worry that their economy will dwarf everyone else’s, and we try to leverage our relationship with India to counterbalance things. (Oh, don’t get me wrong, we are vaguely concerned about India, too. Just not as much.) We worry as they build up their military, yet we place them in opposition to us before they technically are. (That technique sounds familiar, and the results weren’t that great.) We’re worried about them ruining the environment for us, which is also sort of ironic.

So, when you hear anti-China rhetoric from all 3 presidential candidates, it shouldn’t be that big of a shock. Politicians must needs respond to public fears if they have any chance of getting elected. After Clinton’s China adviser quit, I knew we were in real trouble. Now I don’t know who to vote for – who is more reasonable on this issue? Anyone?

Indiana to Beijing

Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2008; Page A22

As part of her populist reinvention, Hillary Clinton last week criticized a Chinese business deal in Indiana that her husband’s administration had supported. Perhaps she should have consulted the U.S.-China Business Council’s study on U.S. exports to China before arguing that ties with China are hurting Americans.

That’s right, exports. The study tracks exports from each Congressional district to China. Between 2000 and 2007, 406 of 426 House districts clocked triple-digit export growth to the mainland. Note that the bulk were manufactured goods: Electrical equipment and machinery, power generation equipment, and aircraft are America’s top three export categories to China in dollar terms. In services, the U.S. ran a $3.7 billion trade surplus with China in 2006, the latest year for which data are available.

Take Indiana’s first district, home of the Magnaquench factory in Valparaiso, whose 2005 closing has Senator Clinton so ruffled. Between 2000 and 2007, the first district’s exports to China increased 307%, compared with a 65% increase for exports to the rest of the world. That amounted to $74 million last year.

Or consider the sixth district, home to the city of Anderson, the former corporate home of Magnaquench. The sixth district saw its exports to China grow 311% between 2000 and 2007, reaching $118 million last year. Perhaps not coincidentally, the city’s official Web site includes sections in Chinese (as well as Japanese and German). In both of these case studies, by the way, the exports are overwhelmingly manufactured goods.

Trade with China, like trade with any country, will at times lead to closed factories and displaced workers. But these latest data are a reminder that trade creates new opportunities, too. Rather than ratcheting up the antitrade and anti-China rhetoric, the presidential candidates would do better focusing on helping Americans seize the opportunities of trade. Pro-growth tax and regulatory policies would make a good start.

Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us, Tibet protesters.

I was scheduled to go to Kunming, China, in July as part of a thousands strong annual international academic conference. My panel’s topic? The cultural politics of disease prevention.  Specifically, I was scheduled to talk about bird flu, the sharing of samples, and all the politics that get involved in the implementation of health policies.

This morning I got an email from a colleague in Beijing, who speaks fluent Chinese, saying that she had received a message from the Chinese organizer that the conference was “postponed”. Not canceled, but postponed. Indefinitely. Hmm.

He was very sorry for any trouble – like having a $1200 round-trip ticket in hand already – and said that it was out of his hands. Which means that the government canceled the conference. Why?

If I had to guess, I would say it has something to do with the upcoming Olympics, their image, and all the young, passionate, slightly crazy protesters that basically made life hell for both China and their own countries. Academics, other than those in business, law and economics, are usually to the left. Which, at Berkeley, is a glaring understatement.

When I got to New York, and then to California, I had prior to that lived in mainly Republican strongholds: Indiana and New Hampshire. My family is Republican. And I always pushed against that, had arguments at the dinner table (even when we had guests over – classy!), and considered myself a hardcore Democrat.

After I moved to NYC, I still felt like a so-called liberal.

Then, I moved to Berkeley.

God, help me, but it turned me back to the center. I realized, from living here, that people on the far left really are as crazy as those on the far right. Basically, anyone who thinks that there are black and white answers to gray questions has got to be insane. Things in real life aren’t that simple; at least not over the age of 25. The last time I thought that things were as simple as ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, I think I was 8 and watching a Disney film.

So, it’s not that far-fetched to think that a bunch of academics and students descending on a place relatively near Tibet isn’t such a good idea. I wish that it weren’t so, but recently I heard someone who is a retired academic talking about sneaking into Tibet. Really? I fail to see how that helps Tibetans. I also fail to see if anything we yell about, in the end, will help Tibetans.

Human rights? While we have no universal health care and Guantanamo? Not to mention the little trouble over escaped pictures from Abu Ghraib. My grandmother had a saying: “Before you go to another woman’s house to complain, clean up your own.”

So now, thanks to all the protests, we can’t go to China this summer. Terrific. I suppose people will say that at least it forced the Chinese government to meet with the Dalai Lama. But, you’ll notice that he also said he no longer wants complete “independence”. Just more say, similar to Hong Kong’s situation.

Yet in the bargain, the protests also caused young Chinese people to show off their own brand of protest. These were not ‘government sponsored’, they were true expressions of a people with waning patience, tired of being considered the de facto ‘black hats’ of the East. Of the world. They are the new Russians, and they know it.

We all just seem to get farther apart, instead of closer together. And that, really, is the true shame. The Chinese government isn’t great, but China is not the devil. Honest. I promise. And neither are we. Well, maybe some of the crazy fringe groups.

大家各位好。我觉得外国人不可了解中国的历史，也不明白中国跟西藏的关系，对台
湾“一个中国”的政策。美国人特别是没思考这些问题，是因为我们不管历史。我
国有挺好的动机，可是美国的政府只管经济的事。我们怕中国已经站起来了，马上
当世界上第一国家。从WWII下手，我国把自己看成最主要的“保护自由”的国家。
我们不应该劝你们哪条路要走。我们也不听外国的意见。可是，我们都只有一个世
界，要联合，当真友。

Email Filters and Politics

I just had to put a blocking filter onto my gmail account.

Since the start of the political season (when, oh, when will the rhetoric of ‘change’ and ‘hope’ end?), I have gotten, on average, at least two or three forwarded diatribes per week. Sometimes, on a bad day, per hour.

The subject lines usually have a forward in them, so I know to be wary. The subject line reads something like:

• “Inspirational!!!”, “You have to see this!”, “This is incredible and moving!” (This for the nonsensical, b-list celebrity filled, “yes, we can” music/speech video for Obama. If I wanted celebrities to run the world, I’d elect them. Oh, wait, I live in California, don’t I? Hmm. . . )
• “Hillary, sweet Hillary” (This about all the Clinton scandals while he was in the white house. Basically accuses them of being murderers. Remember Vince Foster’s suicide? If I commit suicide, I sure hope they accuse some of my friends of murder, because some of them really suck. They don’t buy me enough stuff by far.)
• “Personalities of Past Presidents” (This is about how an air force pilot of the AF1 remembers all the past presidents he has ferried around on duty. Surprise! All the democratic candidates are horrible people, but especially Hillary. She’s a bitch! She’s horrible! She secretly has teeth in her vagina!)
• “Too funny!” “Too true!” “Sadly, too true” (This is usually about an email generally panning either the democrats or the republicans, and making fun of their values, calling them crazy, etc. If I thought that these weren’t compiled by compete nutters, then I might take them more seriously. But, my guess is, they are more ‘fiction’ than ‘fact’. But, on the other hand, people seem to prefer easy fiction when it comes to choosing their presidents anyway.)

Hillary takes the brunt of the anti emails. Barack has the majority of pro emails. Republicans who send me emails equally disparage both, but seem to hate Hillary more.

This barrage of emails, plus all of the political conversations I’ve either been involved in or overheard of late, has collectively made me sick-to-death of this presidential campaign. Sadly, I’m starting to hate everyone involved. I don’t want to vote for any of these clowns.

Why?

Because the results will be the same. Whoever is elected will in no way be able to immediately turn our economy around, the American Century is OVER (ever heard of a place called Asia?), and we will need someone who understands the middle ground (i.e. most of us who aren’t crazy in either direction and don’t make over 6 figures a year) in order to have any really ‘new’ policies. Let’s face it – politicians always need the help of other crappy politicians and businessmen in order to get anything accomplished. Them’s the rules. If you don’t like the rules, move to France and have great health care, great food, more time for sex, and a fashion sense. (I’m considering this as I type, except that my French sucks.)

But, honestly, people. STOP SENDING ME POLITICALLY-MINDED EMAILS. They make me crazy. “Quit my job and go live in the mountains  on the beach where I don’t have to see people anymore” crazy.

So, I’ve blocked you. You Republicans and Democrats and your mutual hate mongering.  You liberals with your 18-year-old sense of the future. You conservative with your 18th-century sense of the present. I’m done with all of you.

Which is why I’ve put a kibosh on any more forwards making it into my inbox. From now on, they will go straight to the trash, where they properly belong. I don’t want to read any more ‘facts’, or see any more corny videos, ‘kay?

That’s why I registered as ‘independent’ anyway, just to get away from you people. I’m serious about my ‘independent’ status, because I don’t really buy into either party’s bullshit. You know what I mean? Do I have to move to Vermont to get some peace? Do I?

And another thing – if Bloomberg runs, I’m voting for him. Just so you know. My mind is made up, so don’t send me any forwards about it.

Go, Hilary, Go!

I really think Hilary Clinton would be a great president. Basically, she’s been training for this moment her entire life. She’s been involved in government, politics, or public service her entire adult life (and by adult here, I actually mean over the age of 29). When she was first lady, she traveled around the world on a goodwill mission to help women, which exposed her to the international scene and how hard it is to get anything done – even when everyone agrees that something needs to be done and it’s a good cause.

Plus, she’s tough. Which is, I realize, why some women do not like her. Women are uber-competitive with each other and have been for eons. Basically, if Hilary shows too much emotion, then men will argue that she isn’t tough enough and not vote for her. I can just hear the complaints over PMS and how a woman would run the White House. However, if she’s too unemotional, women want to throw her under the proverbial bus. This is discounting, obviously, how much people just hate her for being Clinton’s wife; Republicans will never, ever like her.

However, one has to stop and ask the question why some Republicans are backing Obama. My own family, who is notoriously Republican, think he is better than Hilary because he is tougher on immigration issues. For those of you simply mesmerized by the continual chants of “change” and “non-establishment” while you stare at that nice smile, Obama actually has a fairly conservative record on immigration. Like thinking that the huge fence between us and Mexico is a good idea. Seriously. (I’m sure he would never admit this now, but there it is, staring back at him from the Congressional record.) I hate to admit this, but my family simply doesn’t like Mexican immigrants. I’m from farm country, and people don’t actually tend to think things through there, they react. My family members will look you in the eye and swear they are not racist and then, in the next minute, tell you something about “that Mexican down at the gas station”. For real. So, whomever tells you a polite, closeted racist wouldn’t vote for a black man, think again.

I digress.

Obama worries me. He is inexperienced, like it or not. Also, I’m suspicious of anyone that squeaky clean. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is that clean in Washington. Hence, my comments about his support of “the fence” around America. All this “change” talk leads us nowhere. “Change” is inevitable. Claiming that you are going to make it happen is somehow like promising to produce rain; eventually, rain just happens on its own and rain gurus everywhere are proud as peacocks that their predictions were correct.

Not that I don’t like the man, I do. I’m just exhausted by the rhetoric he’s using. And I honestly believe that Hilary would make a better policy president, get more done, and be more respected internationally. Countries in Europe (minus France, of course), countries in Asia, countries in South America – they have all had female heads of state. For all our talk about women’s rights, and I was born in the same year that Gloria Steinem started Ms. Magazine, we are seriously lacking on action.

If Hilary loses, which she might, I’m proud of her for the action. I’m proud of her for fighting the good fight.

George Eliot once wrote (and George is a woman, for all of you who don’t know that factoid):

“Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. That’s my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.”

More stupid teenagers, early 20s coolsters . . .

In light of the Miss South Carolina debacle, I thought it would be fun to post this.

One man went in search of ‘young people’, aka college students, to ask them what year 9/11 happened. This might have been entitled, “Man goes in search of people to make Miss SC look smart”. Surprise, surprise! He found some here in our very own self-titled “best state in the union”. Wow, I think, sums it up. Double wow.

The good stuff is about 30 seconds in. I’m tempted to go out to the local campus and do the same thing, just to do a spot check. My guess is that it would be a better result, since this is technically one of the best schools in the country. But, you never know. . . .

Bird flu article is finished!

I just put the finishing touches on my article for Language and Politics, an academic journal which is publishing a special issue on avian flu. This afternoon, I sent it off to the editor, two days ahead of schedule. So, in other words, I’m feeling pretty good and largely carefree right now.

The article is entitled, “The Politics of Bird Flu: The Battle over Viral Samples and China’s Entry into Global Public Health”. The basic premise is that viral samples are not just about biology, but about politicking. Access to viral samples has been a big deal over the past few years, with both Indonesia and China withholding theirs from the largely ‘Western’ epidemiological community. However, the WHO recently issued a report requesting that all nations who request samples from donor nations give those donor countries full access to the benefits (i.e. vaccines, drugs, etc.). Also, any work already done by the donor country’s scientists must be credited. My article discusses this from the vantage point of the overlap of public health and politics. I suggest that there is a new kind of diplomat on the scene – a health diplomat. I’m not the first to suggest this – in fact, I went to an entire meeting concerning the possible future training in ‘health diplomacy’ – but the article is still saying something fairly fresh and interesting.

Not that I’m biased. I’ll keep you posted on where you can find the special issue and when it is available.

The Politics of Public Health

A few days ago, the former Surgeon General, Dr. Richard Carmona, addressed a House committee – just days before the confirmation hearings of his successor. Basically, he accused the Bush administration of trying to suppress important health information that contradicted the administrations’ policies or beliefs. This is, perhaps, not so surprising. I suppose what is so surprising is that it is being openly talked about, debated, and discussed.

Science, as a rule, is seen to be somehow above and outside of the remainder of our culture. What goes on in the lab is supposed to be, for lack of a better way to describe it, sterile. We want our scientific facts to be facts. Cold, hard, and as clean as possible. What Carmona’s testimony implies is that we don’t always get what we want.

What people in science studies have been showing for years is that we have probably never received untainted facts in our entire scientific existence. It’s impossible largely because scientists, as far as I can tell, are human beings. And human beings are, as far as I can tell, human. They have wants and desires and political and religious beliefs (studies have shown that outstanding achievement in physics doesn’t necessarily belie an inherent atheism). That being a ‘fact’, I think we should take it for granted that what scientists study, what they look for, and ultimately, what they find is either stressed or downplayed or labeled ‘for further study’ due to some combination of the above human desires and beliefs.

What we want, in a perfect world, is a direct flow of information from scientists (who would ideally get money from trees to do whatever they saw fit with it) to the public health officials (who would ideally set policy based on unbiased scientific findings). We want doctors to tell us about STDs, not politicians. Though, clearly, politicians might have more practical knowledge about STDs than we would otherwise care to admit.

Admittedly, the idea of politics setting the health agenda is scary. However, I think that this is, was, and probably will be, the way things actually work. After all, the government and/or private industry fund research, and they generally fund projects that they like, for whatever reason they deem appropriate (profit-making potential, accordance with religious beliefs, etc.). This is how research gets done and how science progresses.

The good news is: the people who pay for and discover ‘facts’ usually don’t have much end-user control over them. Just look at nuclear technology, for one potent example (though this is an example of the nastier side of the point I’m making), or program codes. Technology and research are incredibly well-traveled. What one country bans or limits (stem cell research and DVD hacking in the US), another embraces (cutting-edge stem cell research and $1 DVDs in China).

In other words, science is political. Of course it is. Not as overtly or as much as WTO trade agreements, but in a similar vein. It is called the WHO, after all. Notice the acronym resemblance? Coincidence? (I’m a budding power conspiracy theorist, in case you couldn’t tell.)

The article I’m currently researching/writing makes just my point with bird flu. It’s ironic, really, that this story came out just as I was writing my intro. I changed it, to include the debate. I think that bird flu is a significant case in point – where politics and public health rub shoulders. In the end, the public health officials of the future won’t look, sound or act much different from their cohorts in the state departments or embassies. And, to be clear, their jobs will be just as important as a general’s or an ambassador’s. Certainly in the case of bird flu or XDR-TB, lives will be at stake.

Pig Death Mystery Solved

I take it back. There is disease news to disseminate from the road.

Officials in China have confirmed that the microbe causing the mysterious epidemic in Guangdong, in which 300 pigs have died, has been identified. According to the Xin Hua news agency, it’s apparently a common pig illness called ‘blue-eared pig disease’. The People’s Daily reports that:

The PRRS virus entered China from overseas in the mid 1990’s and has recently shown signs of mutation. It cannot spread from animals to people and is said to be under control in the district.

Tests for the disease are available, and a vaccine against the disease has received State approval and is to be distributed soon, said the statement.

Meanwhile, Yang Weixin, head of Silao Town, where most of the pig deaths occurred, denied overseas media reports that more than 80 percent of the 10,000 pigs in the area had died.

He said the pigs produced there were mostly consumed locally. Media reports said sales of pork in the affected area had dropped significantly since the outbreak.

For those of you more interested in epidemiology – like myself – you can find out more about the disease from this veterinary site:

http://mark.asci.ncsu.edu/HealthyHogs/book1993/mccaw3.htm

Women’s Health in China

There have been a spate of stories related to women’s health in China over the past few days. One of which, in the NY Times, focused on the increasing rate of abortion in unmarried women. Abortion practices in China are not conceptualized as they are here in the US. In a country that has a one-child policy and a burgeoning population, abortions are relatively common and normal.

Abortions are not, so to speak, moralized, and during my time living in Hong Kong, I never heard a debate over the ‘value of life’ as it related to fetuses. Abortion tends to be practiced by women who already have one child and cannot afford the heavy taxes placed upon the second or are afraid to flout the rule (though another recent story pointed out that a growing number of middle-class families are far more likely to have a second or third child than they were even 10 years ago), though they are also practiced by women who would like to insure delivery of a boy (there are no real statistics covering this practice, and I wonder if it has lessened in the past few years as women’s roles in society begin to shift). However, the trend for unmarried women having abortions is, purportedly, new.

As a budding anthropologist, I have to wonder how new this “new” trend really is. However, the story is compelling and the doctors’ testimony that the practice is growing is interesting. It is another sign that China is both modernizing and having unique problems associated with that modernization.

The full story can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/world/asia/13abortion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

That being said, there was an interesting press release out of China today concerning death rates during childbirth. The Chinese Ministry of Health’s deputy minister issued a statement saying that it will be a priority to lower the rate of death during childbirth. The report put the causes down to two things: the choice of women to either stay at home and use the services of a midwife, or the choice of women to go to a private clinic for services. The deputy minister made a statement that promised a crackdown of clinics that do not meet state standards and an effort to do away with any individual, private practice of midwifery. The report said that 50% of childbirth deaths were to be found in Jiangxi province alone.

If you can read Chinese, then the press release can be found here:

http://www.moh.gov.cn/newshtml/18891.htm

If you can’t read Chinese, then I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Year of the Golden Pig – with an ironic twist . . .

The New York Times reported last week that an epidemic was killing pigs across the border from Hong Kong in mainland China, in two areas in Guangdong province.

This is ironic because this is the year of the pig in China, and the mystery disease allegedly began to surface immediately after the New Year celebrations. I’m no expert, but even in their golden year, this doesn’t bode well for pigs. Efforts are being made to slaughter the infected pigs and to prevent any spread of the disease.

All joking aside, however, this story raises new concerns about the age-old issue surrounding Chinese transparency and global health issues. The entire Southeast region of China has residual fears from its bout with SARS in 2003, and Hong Kong authorities are especially concerned about the issues both of accurate and timely reporting and effective containment of outbreaks. Although this disease does not appear to have any of the same symptoms of either SARS or bird flu, concern remains since pigs’ immune systems are very similar to our own. Pigs are often key links in the natural chain of disease transmission, which is why this story is causing so much alarm in Hong Kong in the first place. Authorities both at the WHO and in Hong Kong are worried that China is not being quick enough to disseminate information and, when an official report is finally released, it is perhaps not entirely forthcoming.

The link to the full story is here:

www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/world/asia/07cnd-hongkong.html

Good thing I wrote my fiction novel (Eye of the Virus) about a pandemic early! Gallows humor is my forte, just to be clear. I’ll keep an eye on this story, but unless it’s serious (in which case we’ll all know more about it because CNN will pick up the thread and the panic button will be pushed), it will largely fade into the “needs further investigation” file. As somewhat of a layman disease expert, I know that something will eventually break through our largely inadequate surveillance system, but I hope it’s not in the near future.

But I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so it behooves me to be optimistic about any predicted catastrophes.