The district office handling my work permit sent a group WeChat message today.
The message mentioned calling "Anti-epidemic Headquarters Office" to ask about situation of foreigners' vaccination, and citing response "foreigners should be able to get vaccine after July 1st", and that "foreigners in prefectures can get it now, but in Kunming city cannot".
Anything new about vaccinating foreigners in Kunming?
On hearsay I'd share that last week my wife's Chinese colleague saw a foreigner getting the vaccine at a clinic in Kunming. She apparently asked about it, and was told that it was possible because the foreigner was enrolled in China's (medical) social insurance scheme.
English schedule for the Euros and more: www.sinoepg.net/
CCTV-5 will be showing the matches live at least for the first weekend, with Chinese commentary of course.
If there are concurrent matches, then 5+ would be showing the other overlapping one. That's a common use for the 5+ channel, used for example with UEFA Champions League broadcasts.
5+ used to go with suffix "live events" in past, supposedly focusing more on live broadcasts/replays of events of lesser/no domestic importance, in order to reserve the main channel for Chinese sports or international sports of bigger domestic interest.
Nowadays it seems to be showing more live ice hockey and tennis than the main channel. Varies by season though.
Yes, minorities were excluded from family planning. Still my wife, who is Yi and the youngest of 3 siblings, always jokes how her parents had to "buy" her. There was some kind of fee/fine for having her in the 80s.
I have little experience of rural China outside Yunnan, but it is my understanding that it's rougher up here than in many other provinces.
From what I have seen here, I cannot imagine lot of rural families wanting to have more children without intent and possibility to send them to study, work and live in cities. Even sending them to Yiwu to make sneakers may not be a viable option in coming decades.
In the mountains you simply don't have enough flat land to farm. Maybe somewhere else there is justification to raise more farmers, but also in those places farming machinery works better.
Mind you these are places that should be also high on China's poverty reduction agenda, and having more babies in already impoverished villages would be quite counter-productive.
China doesn't currently depend on income tax of its workers the same way western countries do.
In particular rural residents, most of them, never in their lives go above the current 5000 RMB per month limit to pay taxes. Even in cities like Kunming lot of jobs are below that.
The problem of shrinking workforce is slightly different problem here than elsewhere. Despite all the talk of AI and robotics, China still needs hands to make things, and above all consumers to drive the economy.
No results found.
Bullet train to Dali to begin running July 1
发布者On our trips to wife's hometown in rural Baoshan, we've pretty much had to spend a night in hotel in Dali on the way, before taking a bus west to Yongping and then shared car south to rural Baoshan in the following day.
Sometimes it's a choice though, because there are friends to see in Dali - but more often necessity.
With this new train, we may be able to take early train to Dali, and have enough time to get to Yongping and to our final destination within same day.
So for us, and I believe many western Yunnanese who make way home, this will mean opportunity to skip more of Dali.
A look at Yunnan's evolving anti-drug strategy
发布者What has probably changed in last few years, is that local authorities are increasingly offering cash rewards to citizens who report any kind of suspicious activities by foreigners - be it drugs, prostitution, or spying.
In interview, Yunnan Party chief stresses ending poverty
发布者Overall, my opinion about "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is that the "Chinese characteristics" should be limited to absolute single party rule in Beijing to decide laws and the directions that the country goes.
Implementing those laws should (and are) left to local level governments, and these local level governments should be accountable to the people.
These officials do not need be democratically elected, but they should serve the people democractically.
The people should hold local government officials accountable for implementing the decisions that dictators in Beijing dictate. This is where the democracy in China should thrive. The people should have direct channels to Beijing to report failures of local officials, and Beijing should be quick to respond.
People shouldn't even have a need to go to barricades, if they could trust the supposedly strong central government to deal with issues.
This does absolute not mean that the rule of party would decrease - it would increase, through and for the people. The central government will become stronger, when they don't have to watch inefficient local officials holding posts that they don't deserve.
They implement this accountability retroactively now, and Yunnan is no stranger to this. Development toward society with people first will also mean officials being accountable first and not sometime later.
And I believe that the system will naturally develop to that.
Anti-corruption campaign has changed the picture, where those who want easy life with kickbacks and gifts aim for official positions with capacity to receive them. Increasingly it is so, that those who really want to serve the people even consider these positions.
A smart to-be official like this will eventually perhaps voluntarily ask the people if they want him to take the post to begin with. And that's not far from western-like democracy, even if no formal elections ever take place and the important decisions keep being made by dictators in Beijing.
Foreign observes can keep commenting about those decisions made in Beijing to end of days, while China should ignore that and not fuel the fire by having the decisions (whether good or bad) not properly carried through local levels.
This is increasingly important now, when structural changes (of which many can not be expected to be popular with all components of society) are required to float the ship.
For Chinese, the country being a dictatorship of the party would be better than a being broken dictatorship of the party, that it has been in past.
In interview, Yunnan Party chief stresses ending poverty
发布者@nnoble: "Why should anyone assume that China aspire to become democratic or why 'democracy' should be considered a suitable system of governance for China?"
Now you are incorrecly assuming that choice between democracy or any other system is a black and white decision that defines the entire governing system of a country.
Even China does have some democracy in grassroots (rownship etc) levels, and increasing this kind of democracy does not mean abandoning the rule of the party or socialism with Chinese characteristics. The opposite in fact - well measured moves to increase democracy in select areas can strengthen the rule of the party.
Simple truth is that when people get sufficiently fed and housed, their minds start to wander to what else they should or could get.
Should they be wanting KTVs and KFCs, or guarantee that now they have proper housing, they won't have to move again just because some businessman from Zhejiang wants to build a dam or a mine right in that spot - with or without their permission, with or without proper environmental guards.
In interview, Yunnan Party chief stresses ending poverty
发布者Also there are some possible positive consequences that could be expected from removing poverty in China. It is clearly an area where the state is putting lot of money and resources, and once that is done, what next?
Optimists could expect the country's self esteem and confidence to raise from "job well done", which could release political will to liberal reforms - further increase rule of law, civil society, or even democracy.
But an unavoidable next step is to build support to the aging population.
So just as important as removing poverty is, possibly even more important is to get it done so the country can move to other things.