| Hello Wangjianshuo,
I've traveled to Shanghai twice now and I love the city. I also appreciate the fact that China is again rising and frankly look forward to the cultural enrichment of the world that will take place as a result. I did notice the pollution you're talking about, but I also noticed three other things (health-related) that concerned me even more: 1. Smoking. EVERYBODY WAS SMOKING, even doctors!!!!! If any doctor in the USA smokes, he gets publicly shamed for it, and with good reason. But in Shanghai, it seemed that half the population was chain-smoking like crazy. This is not only terrible for the health of Chinese themselves-- it also, frankly, drove me away at one point, because there was so much secondhand smoke that I, too, was getting poisoned. A couple other would-be foreign investors had the same sort of opinion; one of them told me that about 1/3 of Chinese smoke, and he was sick of inhaling the smoke everywhere he went, it was too dangerous for his health. What's worse is that the Chinese government has not been pushing anti-smoking campaigns like what we have in the USA, because the government makes money from cigarette taxes. This is about the stupidest reasoning I've ever heard, since the government *loses* much more in smoking-related costs than is gained in cigarette taxes. Those costs are (a) the direct costs of smoking-related diseases (lung, bladder and pancreatic cancers, emphysema, heart disease, hypertension, strokes, many other things), (b) loss of productivity as smokers start to get health problems in their early 40's, and (c) loss of foreign investors in China who leave (as I and others did) in part b/c of the health dangers of second-hand smoke. As for the "lost revenue" from reduced taxes-- give me a break! The government can make just as much money from selling things that *help smokers quit* (like chewing gum and nicotine patches), and in any case, foreign tobacco companies are soon going to be entering China and making money of your smokers anyway. C'mon-- you have so many millions of brilliant people in Shanghai, why can't you all implement a decent anti-smoking campaign? (In California, we had a brilliant ad, which hinted that smokers not only get terrible lungs, but become impotent-- which they indeed do in elevated numbers-- and it worked magnificently, dramatically cutting the smoking rate!) I'm serious here. You'll not only suffer massive health care costs, you'll keep driving us foreign investors away. Get realistic about this! 2. Everybody wanted to eat a Western-style diet, fried fast food and junk food like at McDonald's, *in Shanghai*. Again-- what are you thinking??? In this sense at least, US pop culture, movies, ads, English-language media is like a weapon against your country, because it's getting to make you Chinese eat like us Americans-- which, needless to say, is by far the worst diet in the world. We have the world's highest rates of obesity and Type II diabetes, and this is bankrupting our health care system. Why in the world are you following our lead? Your more fish- and vegetable-dominant diet in Shanghai and China generally historically has been quite helpful for your health, but you're messing it all up now by eating like Americans. It's fine to learn and adopt US efficiency and business practices, but not our diet. When I was in Shanghai years ago, almost everybody was slender and fit, lean and hungry. When I went back this year, there were fat people all over the place, more than a few eating at US-style fast-food places. Again-- think!!! Eat soy burgers at your McDonald's places, and celebrate and emphasize your Chinese diet, don't follow the USA here. 3. People with untreated depression in Shanghai were "self-medicating"-- i.e., getting drunk on alcohol-- and committing suicide in alarming numbers, because *they weren't getting proper mental health treatment*. I know there's a stigma about mental illness in China, as there is in many other countries, but you have to get over this, because the costs are too high. We're not perfect in the US either, but we have a strong psychiatry establishment that works hard to treat depression, anxiety, psychosis, and other mental disorders and help people be more productive. Part of this is the drugs, the serotonergic pschiatric drugs and all that-- and they *do* help, though they're not sufficient alone-- but also the commitment among professional psychiatrists to provide psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and group therapy. Aside from this, I also noticed-- as any American does-- all the pirated CD's and other products in Shanghai. You all really need to get serious about intellectual property, for your own good more than ours. You're basically killing incentives toward innovation w/o proper patent and copyright protection. I predict that, when China introduces stronger intellectual property laws, the number of Chinese Nobel laureates will go way up. |
Shanghai is Still Highly Polluted