A note on the coolie trade

Yesterday's post on my history blog, The Chinese in Australia - introducing Francis Darby Syme, started to fill in a small gap in my history of New England. Syme was a major agent in the coolie trade, the transmission of Chinese workers to a variety of overseas destinations including Australia.

While I have always been aware of the large number of Chinese in particular countries, it is only now that I have really begun to look at the reasons for and pattern of migration. This 1853 report to the House of Commons provides an interesting snapshot of Chinese emigration.

I notice that the Wikipedia article on Singapore attributes the growth of Chinese migration to Singapore to "the economic hardship in southern China due to the Opium Wars." To my mind, that seems to be a myth. Chinese emigration began once new sea routes were established early in the eighteenth century, well before the Opium wars, and was directly linked to economic conditions in Southern China. 

The Chinese authorities did not like Chinese leaving the country. In 1712, Emperor Kang Xi ordered all foreign rulers to return Chinese living in their countries to China so that they could be beheaded!    

The hidden textures of Australian history - the New England Chinese

"Ernest Sue Fong who joined the staff of the Hong Yuen store in Inverell in the early 1930s recalled his early years at the store:

I worked at Hong Yuen for 25 bob [shillings] and keep. I lived in the shack with about seven other Chinese boys from all over. Another five lived upstairs [above the shop].

Now the way it worked: at 7.30 in the morning the cook would ring the bell, and everyone would go down to the kitchen...and we’d have a Chinese breakfast with rice and Chinese food. Then into the shop until the shop opened and we’d cut up bacon, fill the shelves, jobs like that. At lunchtime, the bell would ring again and all the staff [Chinese and non-Chinese] would go for lunch. It would always be English meals... Then back to work.

At 6 pm supper was served. Chinese food this time... Some nights, say two or three a week, we’d go back to the store to, for example, bag up sugar, depending on what was needed. We’d work until 9 pm."

Sunday's main post was on my New England history blog, Family counts: glimpses of Chinese life in New England in the first half of the twentieth century. Growing up in Australia during the 1950s, I was reasonably familiar with modern Chinese history. That was partly due to my love of stamps, partly to closeness to the Second World War and the success of the communist revolution. At the same time, I knew little of the Chinese experience in Australia.

I am not sure how old I was, at primary school certainly, when I first found Sydney's old China Town. The thing that struck me in wandering the streets at the time were the faded notices and signs for Chinese organisations, including the Kuomintang. It was a strange new world. However, I didn't think of the living Australian experience of these people.  

I didn't properly realise it at the time, but the area I grew up in had had a very large Chinese population. This was concentrated in the gold and especially tin mining areas on the western slopes of the Northern Tablelands. At the 1891 census, for example, Chinese born still made up 11 per cent of the population in these areas. Their story did not end with Federation and the White Australia policy. It continued.

Many of the stores in Inverell, Tingha, Glen Innes, Emmaville and Tentefield carried Chinese names. Chinese immigration continued, if on a lower scale, utilising existing networks and the exemption clauses in the White Australia legislation.

My post was based on the work of Janis Wilton, a fellow member of the University of New England's Heritage Futures Research Centre. Her work provides an insight into the life of one group in one area in the first half of the twentieth century. It adds to the texture of the Australian story.      

The Chinese in Australia 1848-1853

Like many Australians I knew that the Chinese came to Australia in numbers during the gold rushs. Like most Australians, I did not know that Chinese came to what is now Australia as migrant workers prior to the gold rushes. Almost 3,000 had arrived in the colony of NSW up to the end 0f 1853.

In exploring this question, I have just finished The Chinese in New England 1848-1853.There are so many questions, many of which will never be answered.

In May 1852, the Phoenix sank on its way to the Clarence River. There were twelve Chinese on board who were rescued. But a thirteenth was also found, wandering the beach with the Aborigines. He was mad.

So who was he? We will probably never know. Perhaps he was an earlier indentured labourer who could not bear the working conditions. Perhaps he survived a wreck on the way to Sydney or even Brisbane, then Moreton Bay.

Bachelor's Day - China

I could not resist this post, nor the discovery that 11/11 has a different meaning in different places.

If you want to find out more. I suggest that you read this first and then this.

Quite took me back to my university days.

Ben has been sick. Glad to see that he is better.

Saturday Morning Musings - Confusions over China, labels and ethnicity

Neil and Ben kindly left some informative and mouth watering comments on my post Personal confusions over Australian food. I did not realise either the variety or long history of steamboat or hotpot. This photo shows the Sichuan Hotpot.

Still on China and food, Yawning Bread had a fascinating post, Cantonese Sydney, that provides a picture of life in one part of Sydney from a visitor perspective. This got me thinking about some of the confusions in my reactions to China including food.

Before going on, one small correction to the history in Yawning Bread's post - the Chinese who came to Australia to mine gold and other minerals including tin did not go just to Victoria. There were, for example, relatively large Chinese populations in the mineral provinces along the New England Tablelands. The photo shows Wing Hing Long & Co letterhead from Tingha, 1927. The big general stores in Tingha, Inverell and Glen Innes were all Chinese owned.

We all use labels - Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Australian are examples - to describe things. We then attach meanings to those labels, bundles of attributes. This helps us simplify and understand the world, but it can lead to confusions and misunderstandings.

The first Chinese food I ate was Cantonese modified for Australian tastes from the first Chinese restaurant established in Armidale in the 1950s. The first Chinese I heard was Cantonese. The first Chinese I met were overseas born Chinese largely from Singapore, Hong Kong or Malaysia or, a little later, the Republic of China (Taiwan). I did not meet someone from mainland China for many years.

My first intense exposure to Asia came when I was twenty when brother David and I stayed for a week with an Indian family in Singapore, then for another week with a Chinese family in Taiping (Malayasia), before going onto Bangkok where our father was working for the UN. Upon our arrival in Bangkok the first thing we asked for was a steak!

Living in Canberra gave me a different exposure. I added other Chinese dishes, acquiring a taste for Sichuan food. One of my main friendship groups were Asiaphiles,far more knowledgeable than I about Asian - especially Chinese and Vietnamese cooking. Richard was very friendly with the owners of the Golden Phoenix restaurant at Dickson. We used to go there a lot, coming in through the kitchen, trying special things. This remains some of the best Chinese food I have ever eaten.

Yet again, we have the Cantonese flavour, the Cantonese language. I now ate many types of Chinese food, but the rise and fall of Cantonese - something that I tried to imitate, although I am dreadful at tonal languages as I had found when I tried to learn Thai - was central to my mental label "Chinese".

Track forward.

Arriving in China, I found Shanghai a Chinese city, Beijing not. This was partly a matter of cityscape - as indicated by the photo, Beijing is recognisably an imperial capital city along lines that Europeans would find familiar. However, it was also true that the mental label "Chinese" that I had in my mind with its Cantonese flavour was more attuned to Shanghai.

My confusion was compounded by the fact that after eating so much Chinese food of different types over such a long period, the label "Chinese cooking" had become an absolute pot pouri in my mind, a mixture of styles that had come together to be Chinese. I expected this to be the reality, and (of course) it was not.

One of the issues that I have explored from time to time on this blog is the way our perceptions of the world, the labels we use, are affected by our personal history. Here I have pointed to what I see as a fact, that current cultures and attitudes are like an archaeological site, combining things from different stages in the past.

The migrants who came to Australia brought with them all the mental mud-maps formed from their experiences. Upon arrival in a new land with its different experiences, those mud-maps became frozen in time. Still there, still important, yet no longer refreshed.

To say that the world changes is an obvious truism. Yet we do not properly relate this to our own experiences and those of others.

I do not think that I am mis-quoting Yawning Bread if I say that he found Cantonese Sydney somewhat alien, almost a time warp as compared to the modern Mandarin China and Chinese.

In Saturday Morning Musings - ethnicity and change in Australia I noted in passing that Sydney's China Town - the area that Yawning Bread comments on in particular - was only one of Sydney's Chinese areas. Now in Australia we have multiple groups of Chinese ancestry. The differences between those groups are as wide as any other part of the Australian community. The simple label "Chinese" is of no help in identifying and understanding these groups.

More broadly, and I will finish on this point, I think that we Australians are not good at understanding the archaeology, the derivation, of the labels that we use. We need different perspectives to draw them out.

Saturday Morning Musings - ethnicity and change in Australia

This has been an interesting week, made more so by some of the conversations around me.

On Ninglun's Specials, Neil Whitfield has been carrying his camera around taking photographs of his immediate area within Sydney, including Sydney's China Town. The modern China Town was not the first Chinese area in Sydney, nor is it the only one. However, it is the best known.

Up in New England, Gordon Smith from lookANDsee has taken his camera to the streets of Bingara on New England's Western Slopes. I thought that I would use photos from both to illustrate this morning's musings.

This photo by Neil shows the high rise residential development on the northern edge of China Town. This is part of the development that has seen a dramatic rise in the residential population within central Sydney, attracted by the metro lifestyle.

Wikipedia has quite a useful article on the Chinese in Australia.

At the last census, 669,890 Australian residents identified themselves as of Chinese ethnic origin, or 3.4 per cent of the Australian resident population. These numbers are not spread evenly across Australia, but are especially concentrated in Sydney, where the 292,338 Chinese make up approximately 7 per cent of the population.

Again, the Chinese in Sydney are not spread evenly, with special concentrations not just in China Town, but also places like Hurstville and Ashfield. Sydney's popularity as an entry point for migrants combined with out-migration from the city of locally born means that the Chinese proportion of the population, more broadly the migrant proportion of the population, will continue to grow. Here Sydney is heading towards the position already holding in Auckland, if with a different ethnic mix.

The photo on the right shows the main street of Bingara on a quiet Sunday morning.

Perhaps best known now because of the nearby Myall Creek massacre, Bingara has been fighting to retain population, including the promotion of its own tourist attractions.

Bingara's population is older than Sydney, the locally born proportion of the population is very high, the small overseas born group all comes from Europe.

New England has its own Chinese tradition dating back to the gold rushes. However, if the census data is correct, there was not one person of Chinese ancestry, not one of Asian ancestry, living in Bingara on census night.

The life styles in Bingara and Sydney are very different, not just the ethnic mix.

Neil's photo shows Sydney coffee addicts in China Town. This is a mixed, cosmopolitan world.

People densities on the street may not be as high as say Shanghai, but this is still a crowded world.

China Town is not in fact typical of Chinese Sydney, just as metro Sydney is not typical of Sydney. There are huge differences between metro Sydney and the further out suburbs where the majority of Sydney's population lives.

Now compare this to Gordon's photo of Bingara's Regent Cafe. I have had coffee here. The contrast could hardly be greater. Bingara is a quieter, village world with its own concerns. Sydney seems very remote.

I have used China Town Sydney and Bingara simply as examples, the tip of the iceberg, of diversity in population mix, lifestyle and attitudes across the country. Darwin, as an example, is as far removed from both Bingara and Sydney's China Town as they are from each other.

One of the points I have tried to make in my writing is that Australia has always had greater diversity than is commonly allowed. That said, Australia is presently dealing with waves of change across the country, waves going in different directions, moving at different speeds. I find this fascinating.

Still using Australia's Chinese as an example, the previous dominance of those from Southern China as well as other parts of Asia has been challenged in recent years by a rise in Mandarin speakers. Both may see themselves as Chinese, but the two groups are not the same.

Then there are the differences between the ABCs, the Australian born Chinese, and more recent arrivals, sometimes summarised by the derogatory term banana, yellow on the outside, white within.

Yesterday I was talking to a mother, European, who has enrolled her son in a coaching college to improve his maths. The Chinese concern about education has led to a proliferation of coaching colleges across Sydney preparing people for key examinations, especially those for entry to the selective high schools. While standards may vary, some of the colleges are very rigorous indeed.

In the case in question, to gain entry to this college mother and son were first interviewed, then the son had to sit a test to demonstrate suitability. He was admitted, the only non-Chinese at the college. He is known by other pupils simply as white boy.

I am not suggesting prejudice in this case, although that may be there, simply that the term is used as descriptor.

In all this, at least some Chinese parents worry about cultural acculturation, the way their children are adopting Australian attitudes.

I used to worry about the risk that Australia might fragment into different ethnic groups. This was part of my concern about official policies that seemed to deny the validity of the central Australian culture as a national unifying device. I am less worried about this than I was, say, five years ago.

Part of the reason for this is the diversity in our migrant intake. However, part too is the sheer power of the central culture itself, as well as the ability of Australians to distinguish between attitudes to specific groups (group x is ) and individuals (Fred is alright).

What I find more interesting now are the growing divisions within Australia based on geography. Australia is segmenting.

I am not suggesting that this is of itself a problem, although it does pose some long term risks. So long as these risks can be contained, then I think that the trend will ultimately add to the texture of Australian life. However, that's another story.

Still on China - the art of Tu Shiwei

Since I am still on a China theme, this rather great work is by the Chinese artist Tu Zhiwei. You will find the link here. My thanks to the Pensacola Beach Blog for the link.

Visiting China 4 - out with the old, in with the new

This photo shows the view from our hotel room in Shanghai, a view that captures a key element in modern Shanghai.

The building in the centre left is the 88 story Jin Mao tower, previously the tallest building in Shanghai. Just beside it is the new 101 story tallest tower; this opened while we were there.

Both Shanghai and Beijing are in the process of tearing themselves down and rebuilding. The results are impressive, but come at a cost.

As one does, at Beijing Airport's smoking room I got chatting to a Chinese bloke while we shared a last minute smoke. He left Shanghai in 1989, returning after many years. He mourned the increasing destruction of the old city.

I knew how he felt. I first visited Singapore when I was twenty, a very impressionable age. After the order of New England I was greatly struck by the buildings and chaos of old Singapore. When I went back many years later, all this had gone. I found modern Singapore very boring, just another modern city.

In Australia, Sydney tore itself down in throws of reinvention, Melbourne preserved its structure. Now Sydney is just another modern city saved to some degree by its harbour, while Melbourne is reinventing itself as a life style capital.

If I had a single piece of advice to the city authorities in Shanghai or Beijing it would be this. In your desire for modernisation, preserve your past. Once gone, you won't get it back.

Visiting China - the photos are back!

Well, all the photos including those taken by our Chinese hosts in Beijing are downloaded. So I can now illustrate!

Looking at the photos, I was again reminded at the kindness and courtesy of the people we met, including especially our hosts in Beijing who devoted three sometimes exhausting days to show us as much of the city as possible.

This shot shows part of the Great Wall. If you look down, you can see just how incredibly steep it is.

Part steps, part smooth but still very steep, I tried to imagine what it would be like to run up and down it wearing full military kit! I could not.

Another view of China - and the importance of shifting perspectives

Photo: Lin Yutang, a Chinese writer who played a major role in first introducing China to the West.

My thanks to Marcellous for his post, Olympics - a different view from Beijing or just outside it. It contains a link to a rather good article by Peter Hessler in the New Yorker, an article that I greatly enjoyed.

I feel a little hesitant in writing my current series on my reactions to China because others know so much more than me. Yes, I do know something about Chinese history. Yes, I have met a substantial number of Chinese people. Yes, I have even dealt to a minor degree with the Chinese at official national level. Here both my wife and I, to the somewhat bemusement of our Chinese host, became quite excited when we saw the CATIC building in Beijing simply because CATIC was one element in our shared past. But, compared to others, my knowledge is very limited.

In writing, I am trying to apply both my skills as an analyst and to use the experience to order my own ideas and perceptions - a learning experience.

In Beijing in the early morning I was musing about a post simply called China and Shifting Perspectives. I think of this at two levels. The first is the way in which exposure to a different culture causes shifts in the way I think about my own. The second is the way in which direct exposure to another culture enhances my understanding of that culture.

There is something of a modern urban myth that Australians of the past did not have contact with or interest in the Chinese. This may have been true at a general level, indeed it may well be true today, but was not universally true.

In some of my writing I have tried to discuss Australia's changing perceptions of the world outside Australia. Here I have suggested (among other things) that in some ways we were more aware of that external world than modern Australians simply because we were a much smaller country, a European enclave on the edge of Asia.

At one level this translated into racially based concerns, fear of the yellow peril. But at a second level, it was also reflected in an interest in the depth and complexity of Chinese history and culture, especially among Australia's educated cultural, academic and political elites.

We can see this duality in the work of Mary Grant Bruce, a very popular author of Australian children's books. Here I quote from the Wikipedia article:

Some of Bruce's earlier works are considered to have had offensive and dated content, particularly in regards to racial stereotypes of Australian Aborigines and Chinese and Irish immigrants, and her earlier belief in the theory of Social Darwinism. More recent reprints of the Billabong series have been edited to remove controversial material.

We are far too precious and sensitive in modern Australia in dealing with past views. The Chinese market gardener on Billabong represents the Chinese stereotype the article is talking about. On the other hand, the end of another book in the series - the story of the rescue of a kidnapped Chinese boy and his return to his family - very explicitly draws out the contrast between the simple popular stereotype of the Chinese and the high sophistication of the Chinese gentleman that the Billabong couple are allowed to meet because of the rescue.

Views are rarely one-dimensional.

I first read Lin Yutang, I think the greatest 20th century populariser of Chinese culture, in my early twenties. Why? Well, partly because the books were there on the shelves of both my grandfather and father. These were very popular books. But also because I wanted to learn more about China.

So despite my own self-doubts about the value of my observations on China, I will continue the series. In doing so, I want to educate myself, but also draw out some of the lessons as I see them for Australia from the experience.

Let me take an example.

The Colombo Plan is one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives that this country has ever been involved in. A country with a racially based immigration policy still in place, took in huge numbers of overseas, especially Asian, students. This changed Australia. But it also created enormous good will among students that we welcomed.

In somewhat similar vein, the long involvement of Australia's military forces in Aceh seems to have caused a shift in local attitudes towards Australia. In both the Colombo Plan and Aceh we were making a practical contribution.

Today we have a huge number of Asian and especially Chinese full fee paying students in Australia. This is a straight service for cash deal. We are making money, but we are also ignoring the long term implications.

Unlike the Colombo Plan period when overseas students were welcomed and integrated into the broader student body for great mutual benefit, our modern commercial approach locks students into ghettos. They do not learn about Australia, nor do they establish links. They see Australia in very narrow ways.

We will pay for this.

Visiting China 3 - population, ethnicity and governance in modern China

Photo: The Bund at night. Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and Customs House.

Our hotel in Shanghai was near the Huangpu River in Pudong, the new business section of Shanghai built on reclaimed land. This is a very modern area full of an ever-increasing number of skyscrapers.

As soon as we had unpacked, we walked down to the river so that I could look across to the Bund, something that I had really wanted to do.

It was a holiday, and the walk-way was absolutely packed with locals. Both of us felt something odd, and it took us a few minutes to work out what it was. There were very few obvious foreigners. Now here our thinking was conditioned by Sydney in ways that we had not realised.

If you go to Darling Harbour or any of the popular tourist spots in Sydney, you expect to see a very ethnically diverse group of people, locals as well as tourists. Here in Shanghai's equivalent we had expected the same, and it simply wasn't the case. Later in Beijing we were to find many more tourists because of the Olympics, but the impression of ethnic homogeneity remained.

I make this point for two reasons.

The first is that despite sometimes tensions, modern Australians take ethnic diversity for granted. It just is. By contrast, while China's large population means that the number of non-Han Chinese is large in absolute terms, the Han Chinese dominate.

I was asked a number of times about the Chinese in Australia. I answered in terms of history, geography and numbers. People were interested in this, but it took me a little while to work out that they seemed to be asking in fact whether Australian Chinese were still Chinese or had they really become Europeans in Chinese skin. Yes, I do know the slang term for this, but have chosen not to use it because I think that it will distract from the point I am trying to make.

There are close linkages between the concepts "China" and "Chinese" and the Han Chinese, linkages influenced by history and ways of thinking. The Cantonese term Gweilo, white ghost sometimes translated as foreign devil, may have fallen out of fashion, but has historical as well as ethnic antecedents.

The Chinese face is circular and smooth, the European face square and angular. The Chinese have black hair, the Europeans brown, blond or even red. To a degree, and as I understand it, Chinese perceptions of the world link in some way to their own appearance - the circle represents heaven, the square the earth.

During the more recent colonial period, the Chinese sense of self-identity, their powerful sense of pride in their own history, took heavy blows. The Empire that had seen itself as the centre of the universe was forced to bow.

During the Olympics, many Australians struggled to come to grips with the Chinese sense of pride, including the demonstrations by Chinese residents in Australia in response to the pro-Tibet rallies. As a country, Australia has its own insecurities. It pays us to remember that the modern Chinese state, while communist, is in fact the inheritor of the Chinese imperial tradition, that China's very success is in some ways a salve to previous rebuffs. The importance of national Han Chinese pride should not be underestimated.

During the trip we were often asked what we thought of China, especially by people in Beijing streets wanting to practice their English. It was easy to say how impressed we were. People beamed.

My second reason for mentioning ethnic homogeneity is that it leads into the importance of regionalism in China. We can think of this in terms of diversity and control.

Ethnic homogeneity conceals great diversity in language and culture across China. At a very superficial level, you can see this by comparing Shanghai and Beijing. Food, architecture, language and manners are all different. We have the rice people of the south, the noodles in the north.

Perhaps the best analogy is to think of China in terms of a Europe with a common script that everyone can read. This leads directly into problems of central control.

As I understand it, conflict between regional autonomy vs the need for central control has been central to Chinese history, with periods of strong central Government alternating with weak central control. Even today with all the advances in communications technology, it is simply not possible to run a country as big, diverse and complex as China through central fiat.

I do not pretend to understand the Chinese system of Government. We have a three tier system system of national, provincial and municipal governments. Then we have a parallel system through the Party that also reflects the three tiers.

I do not know how all this actually fits together in practice. However, what I do know is that the complexity, the need to balance central control with different regional and local influences, makes for difficult governance and helps explain both the sometimes authoritarianism of central control with frequent failures in that control.

The tainted milk scandal broke while we were in China. This involved the addition of the industrial chemical melamine to build up the protein content in milk, thus concealing watering. However, sustained consumption of melamine tainted milk creates kidney problems, especially in children.

The scandal began with Sanlu, 43 per cent owned by New Zealand dairy company Fonterra, where the melamine was first found in baby formula. As an aside, I saw one report that the contamination was actually picked up first in New Zealand tests, not in China.

With subsequent testing, melamine was found in samples from one company after another and in a wide range of milk products. The contamination was also found in exported product. Well over 6,000 children were affected, with the last death count I saw at six children.

This was a scandal of huge proportions, forcing milk products off the shelves and creating difficulties for the Chinese Government at the highest level. It was obviously of interest to us as well, because we were there and using milk and milk products.

To my mind, the significance of the melamine scandal lay not so much in the Government response, I thought the Chinese Government responded in much the same way as any Government would have, but in what it said about the continuing difficulties in modernisation in a very large country.

The Chinese dairy pipe-line starts at the farm. While there are some large dairy farms, many producers are very small indeed. This creates supply chain problems in collecting milk and preserving quality, including avoidance of watered milk.

The exact chain of events that led to the adulteration is unclear, but appears to have begun in north China's Hebei Province. According to one larger farmer quoted in the paper, he was told to add the chemical because the fat content in his milk was down. He had no idea that it might cause harm - it was simply an additive. Usage then spread as more people became aware that the chemical could improve returns. Finally, the scale and duration of use led to health problems among children of sufficient scale to attract attention.

One thing that was noticeable during the scandal was the scale and speed of the press response, at least in the English language dailies. The press responded very quickly in much the same way the Australian media would have. The issue was also picked up quickly through the blogging world - the papers often quote Chinese blog conversations on a variety of topics.

Australian discussions on the role of the internet in China generally focus on human rights issues. In doing so, they ignore other implications of the technology. They also often ignore the importance of the now ubiquitous mobile phone.

Application of the new computing and communications technology actually makes central administration possible in ways that have not been possible in China before, shifting the balance between the centre and regions. China is still an authoritarian state - in our short travel through China every step we took was recorded in some way. Computing and communications technology makes this possible in ways not possible with paper records.

Conversely, the combination of the mobile with the internet makes for greater communication among people, in turn forcing modification of state positions. Here I am not talking about civil rights in the Western sense, simply the fact that any Government has to respond in some way to concerns among its people.

Take the melamine case. Six thousand affected kids means twelve thousand parents, perhaps thirty thousand family members, perhaps three hundred thousand immediate friends. Each child that is affected leads to phone calls. These rapidly spread. After a certain point, any form of central censorship becomes impossible.

In saying this, I am not saying that the Chinese Government tried in any way to censor the scandal. I know of no evidence to suggest this. In fact, in some ways China is more transparent than NSW! What I am saying is that the significance of the new technology is that it creates a new balance between state power on one side, citizen response on the other.

Postscript

According to the Shanghai Daily (23 September) quoting the Ministry of Health, about 13,000 babies remain in hospital after falling ill from melamine-tainted milk powder, and nearly 40,000 others were also sickened but had been cured.

Li Changjiang, China's chief quality supervisor, has resigned, while Wu Xianguo, the Communist Party chief of Shijiazhuang City, the center of the scandal in northern China's Hebei Province, has been sacked.

The paper suggests that the Sanlu Group began receiving complaints about sick infants as far back as December 2007.

Wang Yuanping from Taishun City of Zhejiang Province reportedly lodged a complaint to Sanlu in May, suspecting that his 13-year-old daughter developed a kidney stone after drinking its milk powder. The Health Department in Gansu Province admitted having received a hospital report in July that 16 infants suffered from kidney stones after drinking the same baby formula.

Sanlu didn't do tests until June when it discovered melamine was being added to milk to make it appear higher in protein.The company did not report the matter to the Shijiazhuang government until August 2. According to a report on Australia's SBS news, this was the date of the Sanlu Board Meeting at which New Zealand's Fontera first found out about the problem.

The government of Shijiazhuang then reportedly delayed reporting the contamination to authorities at provincial and state levels until September 9. Again according to the report on SBS Television, this was also the date on which New Zealand authorities advised the Chinese Government independently of the problem. On September 11, Sanlu admitted its products were toxic and recalled baby formula manufactured on and before August 6.

In all, a mammoth mess.

China and the West - a note on the importance of dates in comparative history

There is a common view in China and the West that Chinese history is ancient compared to that of Europe. This is both true and false.

If we compare the broad sweep of Chinese history with that of Western Europe following the fall of Rome, then its true. However, if we compare China with the broad sweep of western history including the ancient world, then it is not.

I make this point because I was surprised at just how recent much Chinese history is. Recent is, of course, a relative term in itself. However, I thought it might be interesting and helpful in any posts on Chinese history to provide comparative material on the position in Europe at the time.

Visiting China 2 - musings on social and economic change in modern China

Continuing my China trip, this post focuses on social, economic and cultural perspectives.

Just to set the scene, China like Australia faces a problem in getting professionals to go to the country. Kids come to the big metro centres for their education, then stay. To help overcome this, the Henan Agricultural University announced a degree (China Daily quoting the People's Daily) in rural development and management during our visit.

All this was very familiar, although I was surprised that the Henan degree was reported to be the first in China. I have been writing on these issues in an Australian context for some time. Indeed, while I was away the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a report on regional, rural and remote health pointing to continuing problems in this country.

However, in reading the story I was rather struck by one paragraph. I quote in part:

In recent years, more than 5 million students have been graduating annually, equivalent to the population of a provincial capital city.

Think about it, five million graduates annually. Note, too, that in population terms Sydney as Australia's largest city ranks at best as a Chinese provincial capital. Compare this to Shanghai's 23+ million people. Now you get a feel for real power rankings.

I make this point because I think that we in Australia sometimes have an inflated idea of our own importance. We prognosticate and expect the rest of the world to listen. Our own self-image blinds us to the reality of our position.

In similar vein, our news access in China was limited to CNN and BBC World plus the Chinese English language dailies. Here Australia attracts very little coverage outside sport. The change in the opposition leadership was picked up, but that was about all. More negatively, Australian domestic reporting and navel gazing on race issues in particular carries over into Chinese perceptions of Australia.

As an aside, measured by frequency of comment, Kevin Rudd's fluent Manadarin clearly did have an impact during his visit, attracting many Chinese.

Australia's economic influence is somewhat greater.

The Australian dollar is one of a relatively small number of currencies that the major hotels list on their currency boards for exchange into yuan (RMB). In Shanghai, the large commodity trade and associated shipping requirements generate substantial professional services demand in areas like shipping law.

However, we should not assume that the present commodity demand and associated price rises will continue. As a simple example that I have not seen reported in Australia, the Chinese car industry is presently reporting lower sales - something that is new - because of price hikes flowing in particular from higher steel costs, as well as softer economic activity due in part to reduced international demand for Chinese products.

In the longer term, economic development in China will underpin demand for our mineral products. This does not mean, however, that there will not be short term fluctuations, nor does it mean that the currently favourable terms of trade will continue. As global demand softens, the Chinese will be in a much better position to demand more favourable prices for our commodity exports.

I found the patterns of generational change in China absolutely fascinating, although my understanding is obviously far from perfect.

I have the clearest picture of middle class China. While large in absolute terms, the middle class is still a relatively small slice of 1.3 billion people of whom 800 million are rural. There is a huge gap between urban and rural poor and the bling bling of Beijing's middle class young with their love of Karioke and bars.

Further, even in middle class China there are two key variables not present in Australia.

The first is the opening of China from 1978 after the end of the Cultural Revolution. This was a key defining event.

Those who went through the Cultural Revolution were marked in ways that we can barely understand. I have always wondered how China survived this experiment. Now I have a feeling that the country survived because many people simply tried to keep things going by working round official positions.

Take medicine as an example. Apparently, medical training was cut back to three years. This was too short a period for proper training, so new doctors were required to do another year under direct supervision in hospitals before being allowed to practice, essentially maintaining a four year pattern.

The generation immediately following the Cultural Revolution - those who did their schooling in the late seventies and early eighties - gained from the new freedoms, but still lived in the Revolution's shadow. They appear to see a clear difference between their and subsequent generations with their more individualistic focus.

If we think of an individualistic-collectivist spectrum, the US has traditonally been at the individualistic end, China at the collectivist end. Australia sits more towards the middle, individualistic, but with continuing collectivist elements. Now the Chinese young have moved towards individualism. A story to illustrate.

Coming down in the lift from dinner, the lift stopped at KTV, what appeared to be an entertainment venue. Three girls around 20-23 got in. One smoking, one texting, all three talking loudly, they ignored the rest of us while planning the next stage of their night on the town. With the exception of smoking in the lift, they could have been in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Downstairs, they joined a throng of young people heading in a different direction.

When I asked about them, I was told that KTV was a popular Karioke spot. My comment on the comparison with the Sydney equivalents led to a discussion on generational change, tribalism and individualism. There are common themes. However, and as I will outline in a later post, the similarities should not be overstated.

The second key variable not found in Australia is the one child policy. I have discussed this before in the context of demographic change. However, it has had social effects that were unclear to me.

One theme in the commentary that I have read has been the common suggestion that the overwhelming focus on individual children has in some senses created a pampered, indulged, generation. I have no idea whether this is true or not. However, what I had not fully realised was the nature of the pressures placed upon the kids themselves.

Chinese society appears competitive and stratified. Parents' hopes for their children are bound up in single individuals, the child who will carry the family forward, who will better the family position. China's long exam tradition also carries forward through the schooling system. Parents make great sacrifices to give their children the best opportunity. The pressures on kids to perform appear enormous.

In Shanghai we went to a confucian temple and school. The temple itself has wall after wall recording exam success over multiple dynasties. Attached to trees in the courtyard by red ribbons are many hundreds, thousands, of cards seeking gifts from the gods. Our tour guide, himself a child of the immediate period after the opening, read some of them out. Pleas for exam success dominated.

Speaking personally, I can only begin to imagine just how this type of pressure affects kids and parents.

Return from China

Well, back from China this morning. I am still very tired, but have begun the process of catching up on domestic issues.

This was an incredibly packed trip. Just as an example, in our last full day in Beijing we drove to and then walked up one part of the Great Wall, visited the Olympic site, went to a silk market and then a little later took our Chinese hosts out to dinner. Then we did some late night shopping.

Switching the TV on on our return to the hotel, we found in breaking news that a bombing had just occurred in Islamabad and sat there watching the fire engulf the hotel in real time. Not really the type of thing to watch just before going to bed.

There is so much to write about and across several blogs. For someone like me who is fascinated by the way societies work, this was a great trip. I found it especially useful in taking me outside my immediate Australian pre-occupations.

I am not sure that my observations and conclusions are very profound. However, they are interesting to me. So I am going to spend the next couple of days writing things down before they all blur together in my memory.

Postscript

One thing that was nice while I was away were the number of comments I received on various posts. I tried to respond, but I found it a little difficult because of the combination of time pressures and internet access. I will do so properly over the next day or so.

Sunday Morning Snippets - Jiawei Shen, bogans and social change, our universities and the pleasure of positive responses

Neil's response to my post Saturday Morning Musings - the art of Jiawei Shen included a link to the National Portrait Gallery. There I found this painting, Guo Jian and Elly 1998, Collection of the Artist.

I thought that this painting was great. The Gallery has this to say about Jiawe Shen's work:

Jiawei Shen’s portraits demonstrate a masterly realism. in all his work, he brings traditional skills to bear in the rendering surfaces, the effects of light and the appearance of depth. Clothes, jewellery, hairstyles and the setting all tell something about the subject of a portrait, their social standing or job. Shen aspires to represent the sitter’s inner life, their essential character and virtues, but appreciates the difficulty of depicting more than just surface appearance. Thus, while his portraits are as realistic as a photograph, he inserts symbolic objects in his paintings that inform the viewer about the subject’s identity.

Over on skepticslawyer Legal Eagle has a rather good post, Snobbery and class. Here I want to comment on just one point, the continued use of the word bogan and what it says about Australian society.

Legal Eagle found about this word when she was 13. I was a lot older - I first heard some of my daughters' friends use it a few years ago and had to ask what it meant.

I have come to really detest this word. Use it in my presence and you are likely to get a very tart response.

Social class and snobbery has always existed in this country. However, in the past it was in some ways more benign than the current version.

To begin with, the strong egalitarianism that marked our language - what Hurst has called a democracy of manners - provided a natural control because it effectively rejected more extreme pretensions. Then, too, social structures had linkages to elements of our past and carried their own responsibilities.

No more I fear. I cannot put this really clearly because I do not properly understand it. However, as best I can, the old social structures have been replaced by new ones less tolerant of differences, more coercive, more complacent, structures now based on behaviour and brand.

I explored social change in Sydney a little in an earlier post, Saturday Morning Musings - everchanging Sydney. In a funny way the new Sydney social structures are based on evolving tribes that mix less, understand less of each other, than was the case in a world where social stratifications were in some ways more clearly defined.

I still mix with a reasonable range of groups. In doing so, I am constantly struck by the differences between them, by the absence of cross-linkages of the type that I have known in the past.

Still on social change, last night I went to a Sydney University alumni dinner, a gathering of different alumni groups. I am not a Sydney University person of course, I was there as handbag.

It was an interesting and enjoyable evening. Very well organised, even slick. My immediate dinner companion who was also there as a hand bag came from Grafton and had studied at UNE, so we had plenty to talk about.

A few things stood out from the evening.

Chatting with some of the academics including a dentistry group really highlighted the way in which social change is now affecting our ability to meet national needs.

We all know that we need more health professionals. The starting point here is the number of people in training. To increase this, you need to increase the number of teachers. Yet SU is struggling to find them. In fact, the whole system rests on an aging cohort still prepared to participate in teaching.

The usual answer to this is pay. Pay more, get more. This is the modern market approach. However, to my mind the real problem lies in the declining attractions of academic life independent of pay.

Academic life used to combine a substantial degree of social prestige with somewhat above average income. Academic salaries have declined in relative terms, but the social prestige has declined far more. Further, we have removed many of the trappings of academic life, while increasing performance pressures.

Less pay, more pressure, lower prestige, fewer trappings means fewer interested in teaching and research. This feeds through into the training of professionals we need for our national future.

In this context, Sydney's new VC had some interesting and very frank things to say about the modern university. It would be unfair to quote him directly, he was speaking to the broader SU family and I need to respect that. However, I can approach the matters he raised indirectly by linking them to things that I have said.

In many ways, we are milking our universities, living off our past investments. We have created a situation where universities are forced to battery farm some students for cash in order to try to cross-subsidise other activities.

I have spoken of the effects of this in the context of the University of New South Wales. There was another example of this last night, not from the VC, where a former student of another university commented on the low standard of the MBA he had done.

When asked if this had affected the market standing of his degree he said no. Just having the MBA on his CV met his needs. However, he was disappointed at a personal level.

This is the crux of the issue. In the beginning, you can get away with battery farming. However, sooner or later the decline in the total value of the university experience will follow through to market reactions. The MBA university in question has lost this former student for ever.

On a completely different matter, Kangaroo Valley David and I have been having an interesting email exchange on a couple of my stories. As part of this he wrote:

I forgot to pass on my thanks for another of your posts - about the poet-traveller Hugh Frewen.

I was fascinated by your comments, and your quotes of his words, so I Googled for more info re the book you were quoting from and ended up on the website of www.betweenthecovers.com (New Jersey USA) and hence in email contact re "a near fine first edition with slight bumping and wear to corners".

(aside: this bookseller description could very easily be attached to myself!)

Anyway, no more than four days later it arrived, and was presented to my business partner of many years who has since told me it is one of the most interesting little books he has read, and how he particularly loved the verse.

This post has got a very good response, including a comment from someone who used to live in Brede near the old Frewen Home.

Getting positive responses is always nice. As I said to KVD, I do try to write for my known readers, not just the google search engine algorithms!

The ABC of Cultural Change

It is coming up on twelve months since I wrote my post on Quong Tart and the Chinese in Australia, a post triggered in part by a lion dance done to celebrate Chinese new year. In the post I also referred to the arrival of visitor 10,000.

Now we are coming up on Chinese new year again. Visitor 23,000 arrived this morning - someone from Holland searching via Google on Jeff Dunham: he/she only stayed for a mili-second. Still, welcome. And something has happened that made me laugh, while reminding me of the complexity of Australian society.

Last week I was chatting to a Chinese colleague. Active in a Church group, she had taken out two very different groups into the bush.

Now she had just started the story when she used the phrase ABC. From the context this seemed to be a phrase that I knew from my past, one that I had stopped using in this sensitive age because I wasn't sure that it was acceptable anymore.

Growing up, we used the phrase ABC - Australian Born Chinese - to describe a locally born Chinese as compared to one coming from overseas, an immigrant. Now the phrase was descriptive, but even so. So, very tentatively, I said do you mean Australian Born Chinese. The answer was yes.

Turns out my colleague was leading these two very different groups into the bush. The overseas born group in soft shoes straggled along, the ABC's strode forward.

There was a creek at the end of the walk. The ABC's waded over and set up on the other side. The oveseas born said why, let's stop here!

A little later I was listening to a radio discussion about Sydney's Chinese New Year festival. The two organisers were both ABCs, both used the term. So I guess its okay.

A postscript.

Last night was very wet in Sydney. My colleague and her mum and had spent the night bailing to stop water flooding the house. At lunchtime, she went out and bought a small pump! Her mum was not impressed.

I commented that she could always use the pump (it was very small) to spray people. She looked at me and said that Chinese people did not like water. There was a pause. Then she said maybe the ABCs would like it!