Sunday Snippets - Indigenous languages, problems with the language of neo-colonialism, latest Australian Aboriginal numbers

Photo: Midday snooze, Shanghai. I took this photo from the bus window, hence the reflected light, because I thought it a rather nice streetscape.

As I have said before, so little time, so much to write about.  Writing these blogs is like a huge adult education program, forcing me to study and keep in touch in a way that my university lecturers could never manage!

Just before I went to China, I saw a copy of Voice of the land, the magazine of the Federation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages. I had not seen this before, nor had I heard of the Federation, so I was obviously interested.

The particular issue that I saw was very top end focused, so did a search to see what I could find on New England languages. This led me to Kevin Lowe's The Need for Community Consultation to assist in the Development of Aboriginal Language Programs in schools:  A Draft Discussion Paper. At the time of writing Mr Lowe was Chief Education Officer with the Aboriginal Curriculum Unit, Office of the Board of Studies NSW.

Alienated, I did not read the full paper, giving up half way in. This, I thought, was the type of writing that ensures that indigenous policy and indeed attitudes towards and about Australia's indigenous people will remain locked in a particular intellectual ghetto.

If, as Mr Lowe appeared to suggest at one point, the close links between language and indigenous culture mean that intellectual property protection should apply to individual languages and that words from it should only be used with the approval of the owners, then I as a non-indigenous Australian have no place.

Just before I went to China, Gordon Smith kindly sent me a link to a new book on the way in which court room talk could disadvantage Aboriginal witnesses. He knew that I would be interested both in the topic and the fact that the book was published by a University of New England academic. Again, the language lost me. I quote:  

Dr Diana Eades said her study – the first of its kind – examined “the ways in which courtroom talk is used to legitimise the overpolicing of Aboriginal people and to continue the neocolonial relationship of control over them”.

I struggle with concepts such as neo or post colonialism. Originally popularised by the academic left, they have become quite pervasive. As an example, they litter some of eldest's current university courses. To me, they say much about the attitudes of those using them and have become a barrier to understanding. I actually hesitate about helping eldest even where I know the topic very well because I do not use the right jargon or interpretive concepts. Perhaps the only plus I can see in Mr Mugabe is that his constant usage of these type of concepts to justify his position is actually discrediting the whole language!

This has become too sour for a Sunday morning. On a more useful note, the ABS has released estimates of the indigenous population as at 30 June 2006. Because I use these numbers, I thought that I should record them in table form.

State	Indigenous Population	Percentage of Total Indigenous
NSW	152,685	29.53
Queensland	144,885	28.02
Western Australia	70,966	13.73
Northern Territory	64,005	12.38
Victoria	33,517	6.48
South Australia	28,055	5.43
Tasmania	18,415	3.56
ACT	4,282	0.83
Total	517,043

Still on statistics, if very briefly, the ABS continues to release useful data. I have actually printed some of this off because I want to update and consolidate my general Australian demographic material. This will allow me to test, refine and update some of my analysis.

A little later. Just back from taking Helen to the airport. She is flying to Melbourne for the university games where she and a friend are playing in the mixed netball. Boy did I feel envious! Helen also won the award as the most valuable player for her netball team. Yes,I am a proud father.

At dinner last night for my mother-in-law's birthday, my wife's sister who is just back from a period as a doctor on a cruise ship showed her own recent Shanghai photos. Gee they were good. Quite put ours to shame. She stayed in another part of the city and got a lot of shots of the older parts of Shanghai, parts that we did not see.  

Enough. I am beginning to meander and have to go shopping for the obligatory Sunday family roast chook.We are having this at lunchtime because Clare is working tonight.

As an aside, we did get asked about Australian food in China. But 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.

Australia's astonishing migration statistics

I had not intended to post again today, but I really wanted to note for later reference the recent and quite astonishing Australian migration statistics.

The newspapers generally picked up the headline number, the 199,100 persons added to the permanent resident population in the year ended 30 March 2008, the highest on record. Less attention was paid to the underlying numbers.

In the year ended 30 March, 230,300 permanent residents left the country on a long term basis. This marks a continuing acceleration in the number of departures. On this basis, over the next ten years we will add roughly 2.2 million to the number of Australians living outside the country.

To gain 199,100 people while losing 230,300, we added no less than 429,300 new residents. This is an astonishing number for a country with an estimated population of 21,283,000, just over 2 per cent of the current population, equivalent to 4.3 million people over a ten year period.

I have not checked on the composition of who went, who came, but we seem to be in the middle of another social revolution.

Saturday Morning Musings - longer term impact of the US financial crisis

Apart from one post on another blog discussing why the sub-prime crisis - a US crisis - should have had such a flow-on effect in Australia, I have not said anything about the US financial crisis because of the sheer scale of reporting elsewhere. What could I say that might be new?

While in China the only English language programs that we could watch were BBC World and CNN. Since we had the TV on in the background much of the time while in our room, I watched the latest crisis unfold in real time with a growing degree of bemusement. I say bemusement advisedly. I had never seen anything quite like it, and I have been through a fair number of crashes, have studied others in history.

If you look at the responses to the crisis, you can see two key threads to the discussion. The first is the need to find an immediate solution, a quick-fix that will keep the financial system working. The second is the need to improve regulation to stop all this happening again. There has been less discussion on the underlying economic causes of the problem, less still on the longer term implications for the global economy.

When I look at the US scene over recent years, a couple of things stand out. The first has been the rapid rise in personal debt. We have seen something similar in Australia. The second has been a series of asset bubbles, culminating in a housing boom.

The two are linked. Rising household wealth has allowed people to borrow for both consumption and investment. In turn, this has helped support growth in asset prices. Financial institutions played to this by finding new ways of raising and selling money.

During this same period, US economic policy has not been especially sensible. I have to be careful here because I have not checked the details. I am providing my own impressions.

To begin with, US monetary policy has been far more accommodating than its Australian equivalent. The response to the earlier bubbles in this long growth cycle has been to ease monetary policy to cushion the impact of asset declines. Fiscal policy, too, has been less balanced than the Australian equivalent, in part because of the War on Terror, in part because of the nature of the US system with its divided constitutional responsibilities.

In combination, the two have acted to support continued speculative activity.

Of itself, the ending of a housing boom need not to lead to crisis including collapsing house prices. So long as people can afford to meet repayments, they simply hang onto the properties until the market rights itself.

We have seen this pattern in Australia in the post war period. House prices do fall, but the money falls have not been huge in percentage terms. Rather, sales slow down until the impact of inflation reduces both the real value of the houses and the associated debt to more acceptable levels. Economic activity may slow because there is less building while people have less money to spend on other things, but the asset slowly rights itself.

The problem becomes much more difficult where, as appears to be the case in the US now, people cannot afford to hang onto houses and have to realise at a loss. Add to this financial institutions under pressure who must themselves realise cash and prices collapse.

The US case is further complicated by the presence of multiple economies in the one country.

Not all parts of the US benefited during the long boom. Manufacturing areas in particular have been in structural decline as a consequence of the hollowing out of many traditional US manufacturing industries as economic forces shift manufacturing off-shore. With a slowing economy, these areas are especially hard hit in real terms by the flow-on effects of the crisis.

Again, we can see something similar in Australia. Loan arrears rates, repossessions and forced sales are all higher in Sydney's Western Suburbs than in other parts of the country. However, the rates are all far lower than the US equivalents.

I think the bottom line in all this is that it is going to take some time for the US position to unwind itself, and that during this period US economic activity will continue to be depressed.

In conventional terms, depressed economic activity provides an opportunity to use fiscal policy to stimulate the economy especially through new Government capital spending. Governments can invest in things such as new infrastructure without placing pressure on other parts of the economy. This investment can then help support new growth.

The difficulty from my viewpoint with the dramatic US rescue package is that it appears mis-directed, while its sheer size must reduce the capacity of the US Government to do other things.

I say misdirected because it appears to be addressing two very different problems. The first is the need to restore confidence in financial markets, to get banks lending to each other again. I think that this is necessary. However, the package also appears to trying to stablise US house prices, to stop the cycle of foreclosure and price decline. I think that this is very dangerous because it risks preventing necessary corrections, actually prolonging economic stagnation.

In all this, the thing that perhaps interests me most of all is the way the crisis is indicative of, and also reinforces, longer term shifts in economic power.

Currency is both a means of exchange and a store of value. Here the US currency has been the dominant store of value in global terms. This has allowed the US to fund its trade deficits through off-shore borrowings and to act as the leading global financial centre.

The US remains a huge continental economy. However, the US share of the global economy has been steadily shrinking. To a degree, this shrinkage has been concealed by the US's continued dominance of the global financial system. The current crisis has badly damaged this dominance. In this sense, it marks a shift in the global economic seismic plates.

While I was in China, opinion pieces in the English language press suggested that it was time that the yuan or RMB became a fully traded international currency.

I think that this is too soon. I doubt that the current Chinese Government is prepared to cede the control required to make this happen. However, what we can say with a degree of certainty is that the current US financial crisis has already seen shifts in economic power that will have long term implications.

The Australian position in all this is a little clouded.

In the short term, we are all going to be affected by the global economic downturn. This is of considerable personal interest given that I chose to change work directions at what became a time of economic turmoil. Talk about jumping into troubled waters!

Current official prognostications at international and domestic level suggest that Australia is in a better position than most to ride out the troubles. I think that this is true, although as I have argued before I also think that there are a number of structural weaknesses in the Australian economy. Here the downturn may in fact be an opportunity in disguise.

In recent years, Australian Governments have simply not invested enough in infrastructure. I think that we all know this.

Public investment projects can have very long lead times. This makes it difficult to use them as an effective counter-cyclical weapon.

If I were Mr Rudd, I would be strongly focused not on the immediate financial crisis, but on infrastructure planning. How do we set investment priorities? How do we get projects ready so that they can roll-out quickly?

If we could do this, then we may be in a better position to weather the current storm while laying a base for continued longer term growth.

Postscript

My thanks to Ramana Rajgopaul for drawing my attention via a comment to this rather nice and quite funny explanation for the current financial crisis.

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.

Technorati - State of the Blogosphere 2008

For those who have not already seen it, Technorati has a rather useful report on the State of the Blogosphere. You will find the introduction here.

I will write a review once the series is finished - T is publishing on a daily basis. I found the report interesting because it provides sufficient information to allow me to benchmark my own blogging.

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.

An extreme sense of boredom

Today I read the Sydney Morning Herald in full for the first time since I returned to the country. I was left with an extreme sense of boredom.

I see that Mr Rudd has had to compromise in the Senate. Yawn. Despite the dramatic heading "Rudd's first surrender to the Senate", we all expected this.

I see that there have been further transport delays in Sydney. Yawn. Self-harm is on the rise among teen girls. Apparently the rate has risen by a third over the last twelve years so that 300 girls out of every 100,000 are now admitted to hospital after harming themselves. Yes, there is an issues here that is a tragedy for those involved, but the problem does not warrant the paper's breathless treatment. Yawn.

The new NSW Government appears to be Iemmering itself by proposing new restrictions on L plate drivers. Yawn. All Mr Iemma could do to meet problems was to impose a new restriction or benchmark.

NSW teachers are angry at the latest plans to streamline (=cutting costs) of the NSW HSC. Yes, they may have a point. But none of the debate really cuts to discussion on educational issues. Yawn.

Perhaps I am unfair, but almost everything in the paper was a repetition of past issues. Yawn.

Postscript

Thomas made a comment on this post that is worth repeating in full. He said:

Could I suggest being a little more sensitive on one of the issues that you've touched on here Jim, the one on self harm among girls. You don't know *who* might be related to one of those 300, and has had to deal with it.

Just a suggestion, nothing meant to incite an argument or criticism of you. I know that you only have the best in mind, and good intentions. I could see your wider point, but still.

Thomas is, of course, right. I have two daughters. I would be devastated if they were one of the 300. I was commenting on the way the matter was reported, not the tragedy for those personally involved.

I thought of deleting the point entirely, but then decided to alter the wording a little plus add this postscript as an explanation.

Thanks, Thomas.

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.