Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These too will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China is always changing. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is...
A new study says China has the largest number of tobacco users in the world. And analysts say efforts to curb the habit are being hindered by the country's state-owned tobacco enterprises.
The British-based medical journal Lancet said Friday in a report on global smoking rates that around 300 million people, about 28 percent of the population, use tobacco products in China, despite new restrictions on public smoking.
The study's lead author, Dr. Gary Giovino, says China's government-owned cigarette companies, an important source of revenue, are even encouraging the deadly habit with advertisements in elementary schools.
“The China National Tobacco Company has supported elementary schools in China, dozens and dozens of them. And they use their support to promote propaganda about tobacco use, and they are basically telling students that genius comes from hard work and tobacco helps them to be successful. That to me is mind boggling, that a government would tell its children to use tobacco to be successful when tobacco will addict them and shorten their lives.
David Gray/ReutersAir pollution is a commonly heard complaint in China’s mega-cities. A Beijing street cleaner took precautions in June.
HONG KONG — Charlie Custer, a filmmaker and blogger, is back in the United States. Left China. Couldn’t take it any more. Bad air. Unsafe food. And there was a nasty-scary spat with a government journalist.
Mark Kitto, a Welshman and a resident of China for 16 years, he’s going, too. “I won’t be rushing back either,” he says. “I have fallen out of love, woken from my China Dream.”
The artist Ai Weiwei cannot leave. The authorities won’t let him. After his studio was demolished in Shanghai, he relocated to Beijing, which he calls “a city of violence.”
“You will see migrants’ schools closed,” he said of Beijing in a Newsweek essay last year. “You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches — and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.
“This city is not about other people or buildings or streets but about your mental structure. If we remember what Kafka writes about his Castle, we get a sense of it. Cities really are mental conditions. Beijing is a nightmare. A constant nightmare.”
And China’s nightmare-cities are expanding. There are now more than 40 Chinese cities with populations over a million. In a dozen years, there will be more than 220 such cities, according to McKinsey projections cited in a new Foreign Policy series on China’s urban woes.
In this feature documentary, Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Shuibo Wang (Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square) aims his camera at the astonishing story of 21 American soldiers who opted to stay in China after the Korean War ended in 1954. Back home in the United States, McCarthyism was at its height and many Americans believed these men were brainwashed by Chinese communists. But what really happened? Using never-before-seen footage from the Chinese camps and interviews with former PoWs and their families, They Chose China tells the fascinating stories of these forgotten American dissidents.
To this day, I have vivid memories of this event, even though I was a teenager in a small town in SouthWest Missouri. My opinion was the same as everone in this area of America. These men were traitors and should be hanged or shot upon their return to the States
After watching this film, I've had a change of heart. It was a dificult decision, but I now believe that most of the men were sincere, and indeed, they were most likely correct in their frimly held views against the war.
Of course, I have arrived at this decision after many decades have passed, therefore, in hindsight, I now have a better understanding of the war, the politics at the time, and the anti-war views of these men.
BEIJING - Chronic diseases will experience rapid development in China, as the number of patients is expected to triple or even quadruple in the coming two decades, a newly-released report warns.
"With an increasingly aging population and various factors that lead to cardiovascular threats, chronic diseases in our country will rapidly increase," said the 2011 Report on Cardiovascular Diseases in China, which was released Friday by the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases.
The report estimated that an average of 3.5 million people die of cardiovascular diseases in the country every year, equivalent to one person dying of such illnesses every ten seconds
In the last few years I have had the privilege of meeting thousands of professionals in hundreds of different health organisations in over 36 countries and in terms of sheer scale, the changes in China are the largest series of health reforms that I have seen anywhere in the world. Some of the improvements, especially with regard to universal access, have achieved substantial success. The percentage of the country's population covered by various social health insurance schemes increased significantly from 2003 to 87% in 2008 and 96% in 2011, according to the World Health Organisation. These changes are likely to have taken about half a billion extra people into healthcare cover - an epic achievement.
However, although insurance coverage is broad, it is not particularly deep. In fact, some commentators believe that patients still have to bear more than 50% of care costs. Spending just 5.06% of its GDP on health in 2010, according to World Bank economic indicators, China has been playing catch-up over recent years (average life expectancy at birth of 73 in 2010, according to the World Bank). The share of public expenditure of total healthcare costs increased from 39% in 2005 to 54% in 2010 (similar levels to government expenditure on health in the USA). Private spending accounted for the remaining amount, with a staggering 80% of this latter total coming from out-of-pocket payments.
World Bank figures also suggest that private insurance across China only accounts for a meagre 3% of total healthcare spending (China has not granted licenses to foreign private health insurers from entering the market). Individuals can be placed under disastrous financial pressure during times of ill-health. In fact, World Health Organisation surveys show that the incidence of catastrophic medical expenses are significant and an estimated 13% of the population can face financial ruin, or difficulties, due to episodes of ill-health. More generally, it has been estimated that household expenditure on health in China is increasing significantly.
Very bad news from China, as reported by Xinhua and confirmed by the World Health Organization: For the first time in 12 years, polio paralysis has surfaced in China. Four children, the oldest 2 years old, were diagnosed with polio in mid-July. They all live in Hotan prefecture in Xinjiang province (by weird coincidence, also the site of the latest Chinese food-safety scandal).
The generally accepted math, in polio detection, is that one verified case of polio paralysis represents up to 200 cases of silent infection. Those 200 undetected cases may not experience symptoms, but they can pass on the disease to others. As a result, one case of polio in an area that has been considered polio-free is an emergency. Four cases, as you can imagine, is much worse.
The WHO and Global Polio Eradication Initiative say that the virus in the four children has been sequenced, and is closely related to poliovirus type 1 that is currently circulating in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the four countries where circulation of poliovirus has never been interrupted.
Here’s what the area looks like (map adapted from this one); the green area is Xinjiang province and the red is Hotan prefecture. (Yes, I admit it, I suck at Photoshop. Cut me some slack, this is breaking news.) The important point on this map is that three of the four countries where polio virus continues to circulate freely — Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India — share borders with Xinjiang province. Two of them, Pakistan and India, border directly on Hotan. (Exactly where India’s border with Xinjiang falls is a matter of long-standing dispute.
SHANGHAI — Authorities are investigating heavy metals poisoning in a village in eastern China after discovering that dozens of people living near a lead battery plant were sickened.
Local authorities in Deqing, a village near the scenic city of Hangzhou, west of Shanghai, said Monday they ordered that nearly 2,000 people be given free blood tests. Initial results for 317 people found that 31, including 11 children, had lead levels exceeding safety standards.
Some of the children were sent to Shanghai for treatment.
Heavy metals poisoning is an urgent concern in China, where safety standards have often been disregarded by manufacturers and local officials.
Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Co., a major producer of motorcycle batteries, was ordered to suspend operations in Deqing after it discovered late last month that some people living near its factory were suffering from lead poisoning.
Over the weekend, authorities sent a working group to the village to “rectify” the situation, the local government said in a statement.
China's plan to tackle the nation's organ transplant demands by encouraging new drivers to become donors is getting mixed reviews.
As Reuters is reporting, a shortage of organs has driven a trade in illegal organ trafficking in the country. But by the end of 2011, Chinese people will be given the option of registering as organ donors when they apply for driving licenses, and the nation is also considering financial incentives to encourage people to voluntarily donate organs in an effort to build a nationwide voluntary organ donation system.
"The move is to streamline the donor registration system so as to expand the pool of organs available for transplant surgeries,"
SINGAPORE health-care services firm Raffles Medical is prepared to invest S$200 million to S$300 million to build a hospital in China, to tap into the growing medical needs of the world's most populous nation, its chairman said.
Raffles, which has already opened a medical centre in Shanghai, may set up a general hospital with a few areas of excellence - such as cancer treatment, cardiology and fertility - in a "gateway city" like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen or Guangzhou.
"We are looking for possibilities - site, permission - to invest in an international hospital in China with at least 300 beds," chairman Loo Choon Yong told Reuters in an interview.
Dr Loo said Raffles may enter a joint venture or make its own investment with a mix of internal cash, debt and equity, but he qualified that it must be economically feasible for the firm. He added that it may take around three years to build a hospital from the time the firm finds a suitable plot of land in China, and it may recruit 100 to 200 doctors, who will be a mix of Singaporeans, Chinese and other nationalities.
Back home in Singapore, Raffles aims to invest around S$12.5 million to increase its number of general-practice, dental and specialist clinics to 100, from the current 75, in the next three years using the firm's internal resources, said Dr Loo. By 2013, Raffles aims to complete the expansion of Raffles Hospital, the group's flagship, adding 102,408 sq ft of space that will boost the current floor area by one third, Dr Loo said.
China’s number of HIV infections has increased at a slower rate over the last two years due to better education and treatment, the Ministry of Health said in a notice on the government’s website.
Deaths since the virus emerged in China in 1985 reached a total of 68,315 as of Oct. 31, the ministry said. There were 49,845 AIDS deaths as of Oct. 31, 2009, state media said today. There are 370,393 people with HIV/AIDS reported in the country, the ministry said today.
The growth rate in infections has slowed by 1.4 percentage points in the first 10 months of the year from the same period in 2009, it said. The total number of new infections continues to increase, according to the ministry.
China will strengthen its efforts to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, according to a statement on the State Council website today, citing a meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.
Tsung-Mei Cheng, a health-policy expert at Princeton (who’s quoted in my column today), interviewed Chen Zhu, China’s health minister, for the journal Health Affairs in 2008. Health Affairs has removed its normal gate from the interview for a week, for anyone who wants to hear about China’s health system from a top Communist Party official.
Dr. Chen’s comments include a lot of the usual bureaucratic formalities, but he still gives a sense for how China’s leaders think about the problems in their medical system. His summary: “The Chinese government’s most pressing concern now is with delivering on its principles of ‘equalization of access to public services’ and ‘everyone enjoys,’ meaning that all Chinese should enjoy equal access to basic health care and medical services.”
It’s also interesting to note that he seems to side more with the European system of health care — in which government plays the dominant role — than with the American system: “This also will require that we enlarge the responsibility borne by all levels of the government, and increase government investment in and strengthen government regulation and oversight of the health care sector.”
Dr. Chen was trained as a hematologist. Ms. Cheng is married to another health expert who will be familiar to Economix readers: Uwe Reinhardt.
Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (R), also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, shakes hands with the working staff during his visit to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) in Beijing, capital of China, on Nov. 22, 2010. Li visited the center on Monday, prior to World AIDS Day which falls on Dec. 1. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)
BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government will devote more efforts to controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS and in researching AIDS vaccines and medicines, Vice Premier Li Keqiang said Monday.
"Although China has made great progress in HIV/AIDS control, the country still faces a tough situation," said Li, while visiting the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) in Beijing prior to World AIDS Day which falls on Dec. 1.
The government at all levels should realize the urgency and importance of the work and adopt more effective measures to control the spread of AIDS, he added.
"We should also realize that it will be a long campaign to control AIDS," Li said.
The government plans to provide more support for the research and development of AIDS vaccines and medicine, he said.
"We are glad to learn that progress has been made in the research of AIDS vaccines and hope there will be a breakthrough in clinical trials of vaccines, early diagnosis of HIV, and AIDS medicine," he said.
Li said the government will continue its policies to provide free medical treatment for HIV-positive patients who are not covered by state medical insurance, free HIV tests and counseling for patients, as well as free delivery and mother-to-child transmission prevention programs for HIV-positive mothers.
The authorities should also improve assistance for AIDS patients and children with HIV-positive parents, he said.
China is estimated to have about 740,000 HIV-positive citizens and about 100,000 AIDS patients among its 1.3 billion people.
China has stunned the world with its rapid economic growth in recent years, showcased through the glittering skyline of Shanghai and the global events like the 2008 Olympics. But while the country has amassed tremendous wealth, China still trails the developed world in its ability to provide even basic health care for its people.
With its massive 1.3 billion population, China's health care expenditures are miniscule compared to Western nations.
China spent less than 5 percent of its GDP on health care in 2005, compared to roughly 16 percent spent in the United States and 10 percent in Canada, according to the World Health Organization.
"The amount of government spending on health care is really low. It's less than $10 per person, per year," said Drew Thompson, director of China studies and Starr senior fellow at the Nixon Center.
Per person expenditures in the U.S. have topped $6,000 in recent years.
Despite China's Communist government, health care remains largely the responsibility of individuals. Out-of-pocket expenses are extremely high in comparison to average earnings. A single hospital visit nearly matches China's annual income per capita.
Health Insurance Not Mandated
Health insurance is not mandated, though the government does have health insurance programs that provide coverage to some 90 percent of the population. The programs include an employer-based system, a program for urban residents, and another program covering the rural population. For the most part, the programs do not cover the basic care.
BEIJING, China — A group founded by well-known imprisoned Chinese activist Hu Jia to work with AIDS patients and orphans said Thursday it is closing down after increasing pressure from tax authorities.
Beijing Loving Source appears to be the latest casualty of official suspicion and harassment of activists and groups that take on sensitive subjects, even though the government recognizes AIDS as a legitimate concern.
Earlier this year, the founder of another prominent AIDS advocacy group, Wan Yanhai, fled to the United States after receiving dozens of intimidating phone calls from police. And the government startled most privately run aid groups in March by deciding to regulate overseas donations that many say keep them alive.
China's leaders are realizing that outside help is needed for the country's deep social welfare problems, but worry the work of independent activist groups could turn political.
Beijing Loving Source worked with the United Nations and Oxfam on projects to promote AIDS education and care in rural areas.
Hu's wife, Zeng Jinyan, announced the group's closure Thursday in a posting on her website.
BEIJING — More than 500 Chinese and foreigners packed “Freud and Asia,” the 100th anniversary meeting of the International Psychoanalytical Association here last week, reflecting growing interest in psychoanalysis in a country some say is suffering high levels of repressed trauma — and ripe for change.
For decades after the 1949 revolution, the Communist Party banned psychoanalysis as bourgeois superstition. Sports and revolution ardor were recommended for mental health. Only in the past 20 years has analysis been permitted, at first grudgingly, now relatively freely. But, “It’s still not easy,” said Chen Aiguo, a self-taught counselor in the central city of Zhengzhou.
Violent political campaigns that killed tens of millions in the past, and tight controls over freedom of expression that persist to this day, have left a significant legacy of trauma, say Chinese and foreign analysts. This affects not just those who experienced painful events but also children who inherit their parents’ unresolved mourning, the association’s former president, Cláudio Eizirik, said on the eve of the event, the first time the influential association, founded by Sigmund Freud in 1910, had met in Asia.
“I think the Chinese in this respect resemble the Holocaust survivors and the children of Holocaust survivors,” said Elise Snyder, an American psychoanalyst. “It’s astonishing how much they have been through.”
As Kevin Rudd returns to Beijing today he has been holding up his "third way" of dealing with China as an example for the rest of the world.
The Foreign Affairs Minister told visiting journalists from the media company Caixin that his third way avoided the extremes of polite platitudes and treating China as a strategic threat that needed to be contained. Nothing wrong with that.
But the Caixin journalists raised questions about Australia's handling of the Chinalco deal with Rio Tinto, and then the subject of Stern Hu, and Rudd's story about having a "model" relationship began to sound a little hollow. "There are always going to be some problems," he replied. "That's just normal."
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There was, of course, nothing normal about the detentio
THE EAST IS RED
As Kevin Rudd returns to Beijing today he has been holding up his "third way" of dealing with China as an example for the rest of the world.
The Foreign Affairs Minister told visiting journalists from the media company Caixin that his third way avoided the extremes of polite platitudes and treating China as a strategic threat that needed to be contained. Nothing wrong with that.
But the Caixin journalists raised questions about Australia's handling of the Chinalco deal with Rio Tinto, and then the subject of Stern Hu, and Rudd's story about having a "model" relationship began to sound a little hollow. "There are always going to be some problems," he replied. "That's just normal."
There was, of course, nothing normal about the detention of Stern Hu and three Rio Tinto colleagues on national security grounds or their subsequent jailing for completely different offences.
But Rudd has not been unique among world leaders in suffering from a recurring Chinese headache.
Almost every country - not to mention corporations - is struggling to come to terms with China's rising power and its increasingly ruthless diplomacy. Generally these difficulties, in so far as they are avoidable, do not stem from flawed philosophy but from an absence of strategy or defects in execution.
n of Stern Hu and three Rio Tinto colleagues on national security grounds or their subsequent jailing for completely different offences.
But Rudd has not been unique among world leaders in suffering from a recurring Chinese headache.
Almost every country - not to mention corporations - is struggling to come to terms with China's rising power and its increasingly ruthless diplomacy. Generally these difficulties, in so far as they are avoidable, do not stem from flawed philosophy but from an absence of strategy or defects in execution.
The first outbreak of plague originated in China more than 2,600 years ago, before spreading to Europe and Africa thanks in part to the inspiration for Sinbad the Sailor, new research has suggested.
People praying for relief from the bubonic plague Photo: GETTY
An international team of scientists, led by Dr Mark Achtman of University College Cork, studied 17 strains of Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, from sites around the world.
They then used their data to draw up a common family tree, showing how the different strains had mutated, over time, from a common root. The tree shows a branch of the disease splitting off about 728 years ago, around the time the Black Death struck.
The Black Death was the middle of three great waves of plague. The first strain appeared in the sixth century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. That plague is thought by historians to have peaked in the 14th century and killed up to a third of the population of Europe.
The third wave of plague began in China in the late 19th century, spreading along shipping lines from Hong Kong and hitting San Francisco in 1900.
Looking for a good way to consume a higher daily dose of lead, arsenic, and cadmium? Try smoking Chinese cigarettes.
According to a Reuters report, a recent tobacco study conducted by researchers from the Buffalo-based Roswell Park Cancer Institute found that cigarettes produced in China contain three times the amount of heavy metals found in Canadian-manufactured brands.
Researchers analyzed 78 different Chinese cigarette brands, comparing them to Canadian brands because information based on regular testing of Canada’s tobacco is made publicly available by the Canadian public health agency, Health Canada.
Given a string of tainted Chinese products, including food and toys, in recent years, it may come as no surprise that the country’s cigarettes have their flaws, too. But the study, published in the health policy journal Tobacco Control, suggests that the heavy metal content is neither an additive nor a byproduct of shoddy production. In fact, the culprit is China’s soil.
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Bloomberg News
A man leaves a store selling cigarettes in Beijing, China
“Tobacco like other crops absorbs minerals and other things from the soil, so if the soil has cadmium, lead or arsenic, they will be absorbed into the tobacco,” Reuters cited Geoffrey Fong, a member of the research team and a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, as saying.
Decades of industrial pollution have contaminated much of China’s land, causing concerns far beyond tobacco. Crops such as rice, fruits and vegetables are also cultivated in land that has been exposed to industrial waste and may be passing along excessive levels of metal to consumers. Government advisers warned officials earlier this year that contaminated soil poses a risk to the country’s food security.
BEIJING, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- China, the country with the most diabetics in the world, has launched a project to train 1,000 community-based diabetes experts in three years.
The project, launched by the Society of Diabetes under the China Medical Association, will be carried out in 20 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chengdu.
China has 92 million diabetics and 148 million prediabetics. Among the diabetics, only 25 percent have their blood sugar under control and many who don't die from diabetes-related complications.
Ji Linong, president of the Society of Diabetes under the China Medical Association, said the training project would teach community doctors about diabetes, including management of blood glucose and prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes.
It is expected that the community-based experts will help improve the health of diabetics as well as lower the financial burden for them and the government.
CHENGDU, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- In a tranquil patch of woods in Chengdu, southwest China, 107 bears rest after a life of agony and incarceration.
The special cemetery of the Moon Bear Rescue Center, built by Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) in Sichuan Province, is for bears once farmed for their bile.
Three freed bears from a Shandong bear-bile farm were recently buried here after their rehabilitation at the center failed.
Liver cancers and organ failures, a result of years of painful bile extraction, finally claimed them, said Wang Fan, bear carer with the center.
The practice of extracting bear bile can be traced back to ancient times when people first started consuming the bile, which allegedly has curative effects for ailments such as eye and liver problems.
For over 3,000 years bears have been hunted in Asian countries for their gallbladders and the valuable bile within. Only in the 1980s, after rampant hunting greatly reduced their numbers, did countries like China and the Republic of Korea take steps to ban bear hunting.
But wild bears were then caught and farmed for their bile.
By the end of 2009, bear farming was still legal in 13 of Chinese mainland's 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, and bear-bile products can still be seen across China.
In Chengdu, bear-bile powder can sell for as high as 4,000 yuan (598 U.S. dollars) a kilogram. Some high-end alcohol and shampoo products also list bear bile as an ingredient.
BEIJING — In an apparent first for China’s legal system, a court in Anhui Province has agreed to hear a complaint by a prospective schoolteacher that he was illegally denied a job because he is H.I.V. positive, the man’s lawyer said Tuesday.
The unidentified man, said to be in his early 20s, brought the case under a 2006 national regulation that prohibits job discrimination against people with H.I.V., his lawyer, Zheng Jineng, said in a telephone interview from Hefei, the provincial capital.
Mr. Zheng said the case would be heard by a district court in Anqing. The plaintiff contends that he passed a written test and interviews for a teaching job there but that the city education bureau rejected him after a physical examination showed he was infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
“In the past on sensitive cases like this, the court would be very reluctant to accept the case,” Mr. Zheng said. “But this time they accepted it smoothly and quickly. That means the legal system in China is making progress.”
H.I.V.-positive Chinese suffered both official and public discrimination for years after the disease first surfaced there in 1986, as infected students were often forced to leave school and workers were shunted from their jobs.
IF life with HIV/AIDS were not challenging enough, the Chinese government seems determined to make it harder by suppressing claims for compensation.
When Tian Xi was nine years old he contracted HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion at Xincai Country No 1 People's Hospital in central China's Henan Province.
He is now 23 and since his late teens he has taken up his family's call for compensation for himself and others similarly affected.
On August 6 he was detained by police in Xincai County without his medication or any money, and later arrested. He was taken to the hospital for treatment on August 16 and taken into criminal detention on August 19; his parents were told two days later.
Mr Tian also has the debilitating liver virus hepatitis B and its more deadly cousin hepatitis C.
His mother and aunt went to the police station and asked to see him on August 21, but they were turned away. They were only able to send some clothes in to the pre-trial detention centre.
"Dong, the police officer in charge of my son's case, didn't tell us what is happening to him, only told us that he is 'safe'," Mr Tian's father, Tian Demin, told The Weekend Australian.
"My wife gave Dong 100 yuan last week and asked him to give it to Tian Xi to buy some food, for he needs nutrition, but Dong returned the money when he came back from the detention centre.
"The authorities have issued a notification of arrest and said they will sentence him."
Mr Tian Jr was already a target for authorities. He had previously been detained in Beijing, thrown into a "black jail" -- shadowy detention centres run by local governments for those who come from the country to the capital to petition the central government.
On July 9 the local county government issued a statement about him. "Tian Xi has a complicated background, and his thinking and behaviours are deeply affected by (exiled activist) Wan Yanhai," the statement read.
"He went to Beijing twice recently to make illegal petitions and brought great inconvenience to the local government's supervision of him.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 22 /PRNewswire/ --Samplify Systems, Inc., a leading provider of signal-compression technology, semiconductors, and solutions, today announced that the Chinese Government has granted the company its second series of technology patents for medical imaging applications. These new patents come on the heels of the first series of patents that were granted earlier this month for wireless base station compression. More specific, China utility model patents were granted by the China State Intellectual Property Office covering the use of compressing and storing x-ray projection data in Computed Tomography (CT) systems. CT projection data is generated when x-rays are digitized and are transferred, stored, and processed by CT image reconstruction computers. Samplify's patented compression technology reduces CT projection data bandwidth and storage requirements by a factor of four. These patents include:
With the granting of this second series of patents in China, Samplify's Prism CT compression technology is now protected in a market and region that is strategically important for the company. Indeed, Samplify continues to make inroads with the leading medical system companies in China. As important, these OEMs continue to leverage China's significant stimulus funding of $125B, part of which will be used for the deployment of next-generation CT equipment. Samplify's innovative compression technology for medical applications saves medical imaging OEMs significant design, development, and manufacturing costs for the transport and storage of CT projection signals from the x-ray detectors on the rotating gantry to the image reconstruction workstation.
According to Al Wegener, Samplify CTO and founder, "Medical equipment OEMs who are developing new, lower-cost CT systems, are challenged to transport and store huge amounts of digital data in real time. Samplify's Prism CT compression technology offers these OEMs an innovative way to reduce these transfer and storage bottlenecks in a cost-effective manner. No other solution can match Samplify's low complexity and low-cost solutions while operating at compression rates greater than 200 Msps."
"Today's announcement is another example of the Chinese government's willingness to open up its markets to foreign corporations in an effort to gain access to the best technologies and intellectual property for its own corporate base," says Tom Sparkman, Samplify CEO. "We are very pleased," he added, "that we are able to make inroads with Chinese OEMs using our technology in such a protected fashion."
BEIJING — A 23-year-old Chinese man who contracted the AIDS virus as a boy through a blood transfusion and who has since campaigned for the rights of AIDS sufferers has been detained, activists said Saturday.
Tian Xi, who told fellow activists that his repeated protests had angered authorities, was detained on Tuesday at a hospital in Henan province's Xincai county before being taken to an unknown location, the campaigners said.
Tian was lobbying for compensation for thousands of Chinese like himself who have contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, via tainted blood supplies.
He learned recently that local officials had urged police to detain him to curtail his work, according to the Chinese group Aizhixing and Meg Davis, the New York-based head of Asia Catalyst, a group which helps to train activists.
"Tian Xi is a sweet guy who has suffered a great deal and who cares deeply about the suffering of others. He is in poor health and we're very concerned about his condition in detention," Davis told AFP.
Police in Gulu, the town where Tian was living, declined to comment, while calls to officials in Xincai county went unanswered.
In 2008, China was home to 300 million smokers who consumed approximately 1.7 trillion cigarettes a year, or 3 million cigarettes a minute.
In a report just released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current statistics tell us that the tobacco epidemic plaguing China isn't improving.
Today there are approximately 301 million smokers, and only 16 percent of them are thinking about quitting within the next year.
Here in the United States we have the benefit of anti-smoking campaigns and legislation that are aggressively geared toward teaching us about the health hazards of smoking and how to quit using tobacco. In China however, the message doesn't seem to be sinking in. A few pertinent statistics:
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