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Last week we made the trek to Fuzhou in order to undergo medical examinations at the only hospital in the province that has been designated fit for the purpose by Australian immigration authorities. As is usually the case after a visit to a Chinese hospital, one leaves with plenty of blogging material. 

First, don’t assume that having an appointment system endows a Chinese hospital with a degree of efficiency. On the contrary, it is designed to empower hospital administration staff with the right to turn you away if you don’t have one. I’m fairly confident in my assessment here because every one of the hundreds of foreign visa hopefuls had been given the same appointment time – 8am.

The smart and the temporally challenged turn up at 6am. Those not blessed with such foresight, be it through naivety or lack of savvy, face the following pantomime:

7:50 Arrive at the hospital and ask reception on which floor we might find the immigration examination department. “Eighth floor”, we’re told.

8:00 Decide to take the stairs to the eighth floor to avoid getting squished in the elevator. With no clear indication that we are in the right place we ask a nurse where we should report to first. “Sixth floor”, she replies. Of course. Naturally. Goes without saying.

8:10 Walk down two flights of stairs and approach a window promisingly signed immigration medical examination. We are curtly told to get ourselves a number. This involves a ‘checking in’ procedure to make sure we have an appointment. It’s difficult to see the desk beyond the wall of people in front of it. There’s some semblance of a line, so we stand in it.

8:50 We get to the front of the queue only to be told that we need to pay our medical examination fees before we can register. And where do we pay? “Fifth floor”, came the impatient response. Obviously. Where else? Wife is henceforth dispatched to track down a cashier while I valiantly try to hold a place in the line.

9:15 Wife returns with the necessary proof of payment and we duly get our ticket. There are about a dozen numbers between us and the relevant counter. We drink water to prepare for the urinalysis.

9:50 Our number’s up and we hand our completed medical forms over for inspection. Deep consternation on the other side of the counter as they try to figure out why a foreign man would need a Chinese check-up to go to a foreign land. They either think I’m a spy or an inspector working for the Aussie government.

10:00 Having scrambled over the first couple of hurdles we’re summoned to enter the examination area where we are handed a couple of flimsy green gowns and a key to a locker in which we should place everything else. Emerging from the changing room was a bit too public for this laowai. In the service of a better tomorrow, I remind myself, and bravely stride forward to take possession of a small plastic cup and a test tube before heading for the men’s room.

10:15 looking as nonchalant as a lone foreigner holding a urine sample possibly can, I hand my test tube to a disinterested nurse who sends us on our way to the next stage of the medical process – the ominous sounding room 4.

10:20 There’s a slight tailback outside room 4 but they’ve got a pretty efficient production line going. Once inside we’re soon undergoing heart rate, blood pressure, weight, height, and eyesight tests. Blood pressure first – 133 over 75. Obviously I need a bit more stress in my life.  Next I’m on the scales, which read 61Kg. Dispelling the notion that gender stereotyping can’t be fun, the nurse scolds my wife for not providing me with sufficient nourishment. They don’t bother with a height measurement, instead asking my wife for a ballpark figure. Eye test instructions were a little lost in translation, but I scrape by. So far, so good; now told to get our asses over to room 5.

10:55 Room 5 is the domain of a doctor who looks old enough to be Mao’s father. He seems to be responsible for testing the range of movement in joints and limbs, as well as noting down any distinguishing features. As instructed, I wiggle my hands and feet for the old fella before impressing him with a yoga-like stretch to the ceiling. Then he asks me to bend over. Say what? I hesitate for a second before reminding myself that he’s about 90 and my wife is in the room. He makes a few notes and we exit the room, relieved.

11:05 The worst is over for me, although my wife still has to go to room 6. It’s strictly girls only in there and I have no news about what went on in that hallowed sanctum. Meanwhile, I’m in a scrum that passes for a line of people waiting to see a man with a stethoscope. Fortunately – there’s at least two dozen onlookers – he doesn’t want to listen to any parts that don’t occasionally get exposed to sunlight. He likes what he hears and sends us next door for a chest x-ray.

11:30 The chest x-ray doctor is in a bad mood but lightens up at the prospect of zapping a laowai with a dose of radiation. Either that or he was laughing at my legs.

11:45 Before midday – and sooner than expected – the whole ordeal is over. We head back to the changing rooms and a nurse informs us that that our urinalyses were in order; so we are free to go and replenish our self-deprived sugar and caffeine levels.

All in all, not my worst China hospital experience.

I think it could be the end, rather than a setback. In the shadow of global economic woes the CCP have reached out, as is their pragmatic inclination, and further embraced their despotic, oppressive imitators neighbours and simultaneously dealt a massive blow to Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters.

This report outlines the plans for oil and gas pipelines that will, in all probability, keep Burma’s military junta in the brutal opulence to which they’ve become accustomed for the foreseeable future.

 

Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported that the project would include a $1bn gas pipeline and a $1.5bn oil pipeline.
China National Petroleum Corporation, the parent of market giant Petrochina, would manage and own a majority share in the joint project with Myanmar Oil & Gas Enterprise of Burma, the Japanese paper said.

That basically means that the CCP are running the show, and they will certainly not countenance the freedom of the democratically elected Nobel Peace Prize winner. The chances of the Burmese people benefitting from their strategic importance, vast resources, and tourism potential look bleak.

Whatever name the Chinese government gives their regional and global deal making, they sure have the look and feel of expansionism and territorialism. Am I being alarmist? I suppose I am. But until the Chinese government can provide some evidence of moral responsibility in the way it does business, I think we should all be alarmed at the prospect of their growing power.

Chinese students at Newcastle University have been rumbled after they were unable to handle the course material or workload. This story  from the BBC is the tip of a very large iceberg:

Most of the 49 Chinese students, along with one Taiwanese pupil, had enrolled on business studies courses which they started in September.

But lecturers became suspicious when they were unable to keep up with work.

Their applications were rechecked and forged English language and degree certificates were discovered.

A (Newcastle) University spokesman said: “We would strongly advise other universities to look very carefully at the systems they have in place to detect fraudulent applications and to strengthen them if necessary.  

About time, too. The desire of young Chinese, not to mention their parents, to secure overseas placements – a pathway to citizenship - in America, Britain, Australia, and elsewhere has long since overidden any moral considerations (if considered at all) met along the way.

No, it’s not every overseas Chinese student who’s at it, but the problem is endemic. Chinese parents want to secure the best possible future for both themselves and their children. The idea planted deep in the mind of a million families is that getting their sons and daughters enrolled overseas will be the answer to all their problems and economic hopes.

With a typical determination to reach this goal ’by any means’ countless aspiring overseas Chinese students lacking sufficient funding, qualifications, or experience forge documents to make good the shortfall and , all too often, get away with it.

I believe a little blame for the extent of this problem lies at the door of those institutions who eye the demand for places from foreign students a little too greedily, a fact that I’m sure has led to a certain lack of scrutiny on the part of some universities when screening overseas applications.

I believe screening by the immigration authorities of all countries should be thorough for prospective foreign students. One reason is this: Given that overseas study often leads to work and citizenship in the host country, authorities should be doing their utmost to ensure that students not only meet financial, academic, and health criteria, but also meet the moral and ethical standards necessary to conduct themselves properly in their host countries. Cheating their way to university places simply doesn’t cut it.

Now the tip of the iceberg has been uncovered it’s time to start chipping away at the vast submerged block.

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If the next 24 hours don’t see an African American elected President of the United States, I hereby declare my intention to turn to religion, drink, or both.

Why? Because a failure by America’s electorate to give Obama a clear mandate will, once and for all, end any vestige of hope that a democratic system is a pathway to responsible governance.

The choice couldn’t have been made any simpler if the voters had been asked to choose between ketchup and mayo with their fries. It is, for want of a better phrase, a black and white issue.

That’s not to say that one option is right and the other wrong, rather that two is the smallest number in any process that confers choice on the participant and that the alternatives offered on this occasion are so different as to represent something of binary state.

Furthermore, turnout is expected to do justice to a system that gives a country’s citizens the right to vote for their leader. Perhaps this point explains the apathy and general ignorance concerning the election I’ve been encountering among my students in China. Conservatively, 80% of my students had no idea that today was the big day and half of that number thought Barack Obama was either a Japanese card game or the starting forward for the Miami Heat. Their lack of awareness, at least in part attributable to the media policies of an unelected one-party government, is one of the reasons why this one matters a great deal.

America, despite its many imperfections and the transgressions foreign and domestic of the Bush era, remains the only unified counterweight of any substance to China’s ever increasing global influence. The world needs America to begin recovering some disillusioned allies and to acquire (as opposed to regain) the status of ‘responsible stakeholder’ in world affairs. The reason for this is, much to CCP’s glee, eight years of Bush blundering around the globe has seen US respect and clout shoved out the back door of many countries, while at the same time China has jammed an enticing and persistent foot in the same nations’ front doors, not to mention half a dozen despotic regimes that nobody else will do business with.

Democratically elected leaders are not always morally upstanding folk, but they are ultimately accountable to the electorate who help to keep them on a straight path through freedom of expression and the right to vote, two pillars of civilisation that lend themselves to moral responsibility even if they can’t guarantee it. What is certain, however, is that the leaders of any country lacking these two pillars will remain incapable of supporting any moral initiative that doesn’t include obvious financial benefit or geopolitical advantage.

This is the main reason that today’s unfolding election is of such great importance to all of us: like it or not, American standing in the world, and more importantly its relationship with a powerful and resource-hungry China, is going to define the world of the coming decades. This relationship, and the path of humanity, can only be steered in a positive direction by an American president of exceptional intelligence, gravitas, and moral courage who can draw a clear distinction between himself and the last incumbent. Obama is the only candidate who gets a tick in every box.  

Should Obama fail to ride the wave of hope all the way to the Oval Office I’ll be looking for consolation from a bottle of brandy and a preacher. Fortunately, I have every confidence that such desperate measures will prove unnecessary.  Obama won’t find all the answers – the Bush administration has screwed up too badly to allow speedy, across the board solutions. But he can deliver one thing that the whole world badly needs: a presidency that doesn’t look, feel, sound, or act like his predecessor.

Let’s all drink to that.

Update

Well, he did it and he did it in style. And when the job was done he delivered arguably the greatest victory speech of all time. Watch it if you haven’t already. My faith in America and its people is restored. If my students don’t know Obama’s name tomorrow…