Since the 1990s, healthcare, education and housing have been the most difficult areas for China to reform. A popular joke goes, "Housing reforms mean unaffordable housing; educational reforms drive parents crazy; healthcare reforms shorten your life." The irony and frustration evident in such sayings demonstrate the gravity of these issues.
A few days ago, a father in Liaoning Province killed his sick daughter. This is not just an isolated tragedy, and the underlying cause deserves our attention.
Illness leading to poverty is one of the most difficult problems facing healthcare reform in China. Because incomes have not grown at the same rate as medical costs, neither people in rural areas nor those in Beijing, Shanghai, or other cities can afford to become sick.
The tragedy of the father, a retired well-driller surnamed Wang, killing his own child symbolizes the problems of industrial development in northeastern China, where working conditions are dangerous and wages low. Wang's monthly salary of 600 yuan (US$74.95) could not cover the 200,000 yuan in medical bills.
The unequal distribution of medical resources, corruption in the healthcare professions, low efficiency, exploitation by middlemen and other problems pose big challenges to Beijing in implementing its health reform policies.
Wang's meager salary was not sufficient to pay the huge medical expenses for his daughter's care and the 5,000 yuan or 6,000 yuan for his son's annual university tuition, and this brought the family to its knees financially.
In China today, the rich-poor gap between urban and rural areas is conservatively estimated to stand at six to one. Reform of China's financial system means more agricultural villagers are unable to afford to go to school or forces them to drop out of school.
Although being accepted into an urban university brings honor to one's family, all sorts of fees and donations means education leads to a more rigid class system, rather than being a catalyst for social mobility. The 5,000 yuan to 6,000 yuan annual university tuition is 10 times higher than the Chinese poverty line. Statistics show that about 150 million people live under the poverty line.
In Shanghai today, the average cost of one square meter of floor space is 9,250 yuan. That is 1.5 years' income for Wang. A 30m2 apartment is about 276,000 yuan, 40 times Wang's annual income.
Behind the real-estate problem lies a tremendous financial bubble, speculative risk and an excess of supply because people can't afford to buy a house.
The housing problem did not make Wang kill his daughter. But China's inefficient macroeconomic adjustment policies have been unable to cool the overheated economy. And even if they were able to cool the economy, there are fears this would lead to a rise in unemployment and social instability. Housing will be a potential flashpoint in China's financial reforms, and could result in rising bad loans at banks and local government crises.
There are similar human tragedies in Taiwan -- currently thousands of children cannot afford to eat school lunches. The health insurance system is being reformed, but we still do not see any improvement in the quality of health care, the doctor-patient relationship or medical ethics.
Taiwan is facing the same barriers as China. And tragedies like these make one wonder about the agreement reached in the recent Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-Chinese Communist Party economic forum to allow Taiwanese physicians to practice medicine in China and to recognize Taiwanese academic degrees in China. Do Taiwanese only see the advantages of these measures, or are they also able to consider the underlying humanitarian concerns?
Jackson Yeh is a freelance writer.
Translated by Lin Ya-ti
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry