After over 20 years of travelling regularly to China, I think I am becoming less sceptical. Well slightly.
Where else in the world could you see a girl, no more than 10 years old, leaving an after-school activity at 9:30 in the evening, hailing a taxi with the app on her mobile phone and taking that taxi home by herself? Above all else, people feel safe in China and, with saturation coverage by CCTV with facial recognition capacity, who would dare abduct a child?
On the other hand, in a country where picking up ‘the rule book’ would challenge an Olympic weightlifter, it is not uncommon to see people smoking in restaurants, against the law, while sitting next the a ‘No smoking’ sign with impunity. Small victories I guess.
Most of what I find out about what is happening China I find out by speaking to people. For most things there is no other source of information that I can read. My experience here has stretched neither to reading nor speaking Chinese. Some of what happens here possibly could only happen here but from some of what happens we could learn in the U.K.
International academic publishing has become contaminated by the predatory publishers. These are all online, they are all ‘open access’ and charge authors for publishing with them. They include a spectrum of publishers, from some which just produce very poor quality journals, paying scant regard to peer review and publication ethics, to others which are patently criminal enterprises that take your money (and your bank account details) but fail to publish your article.
In U.K. academia we seem to lack the will to tackle the predatory publishers. A colleague — Professor Mark Hayter of Manchester Metropolitan University — and I published some suggestions in the Times Higher for how universities could introduce systems at departmental and institutional levels to prevent academics publishing in predatory journals. All we got was abuse in return. Those in charge of the U.K. Research Excellence Framework, whereby research infrastructure funding is distributed to universities, refused to consider whether or not research outputs returned in the 2021 exercise were predatory despite the efforts of a few academics, myself included.
No such hesitation in China where the Ministry of Education produces lists of journals which are considered acceptable places to publish across disciplines. China tends to rely on journals included in the Clarivate list, where those with impact factor (a measure of citations) are included. This ensures that the journals meet certain minimum standards related to ethics, peer review and the associated personnel. Now, China has ramped up the campaign to prevent academics publishing in predatory journals by scanning the publications from universities, identifying predatory journals and the academics who have published in them and asking Deans to investigate those members of staff. I met a Dean who had been asked to investigate members of staff. This is only a very recent initiative and outcomes are not available yet, but my guess is that, without a plausible explanation — or, perhaps, even with one — that these members of staff will soon be seeking alternative employment.
I also discovered that China leads the way in promoting female academics. This is something that seems to be an obsession in U.K. universities but which we seem powerless — ironically due to our own equal opportunities policies — to address. The main outcome has been the creation of the monster known as Athena Swan which, while it creates mounds of paperwork and occupies hours of academic time, achieves little else. We agonise on promotion panels and in the Research Excellence Framework over how to consider the time taken off by women who have babies and devote time to childcare. Formulae are considered too, er, formulaic and, in any case, most people involved would rather spend time on committees discussing the issue at length. Perish the thought that we would simply award women a fixed amount of additional time to achieve career goals; feminists may object even to this positive discrimination and what about women who do not have any children?
Again, China has the answer. Female academics across the board are now given five years of credit when they are seeking promotion to the next level. Of course, there is also method in China’s seeming madness. They are suffering a severe shortage of children, and their demographics are severely skewed towards the least economically active, older people. What better incentive to have children than additional time? And Chinese couples may have up to three children now.
The only regular, if not entirely reliable, source of news for non-Chinese speakers here is China Daily. I have never seen it for sale, but it does apparently cost RMB2 (20p) and is available on internal flights in the VIP lounges and on the plane. Nevertheless, it is worth scanning. Much was made of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This policy has long been in development and has been relentlessly pursued by China to extend and ease its trading with an ever-increasing number of countries. We can be sure that it also aims to extend Chinese influence across the globe.
Also from China Daily, China seeks to become independent in the production of the microchips required to run artificial intelligence (AI) systems including large language models, of which ChatGPT is but one example. China sees great potential in AI, especially in the field of health for everything from information systems to aid clinical decision making to the use of machines for surgery. Conversations with clinical colleagues revealed that better results are already being obtained from AI guided robotic surgery over human surgery for a limited range of procedures. In the West, again, we dither Canute-like over the AI wave that is soon going to engulf us. China takes a more proactive approach. At a more mundane level I saw robots delivering food to tables in a restaurant in Dongguan in Guandong province, and delivery robots regularly whizz around the campus where I work at Southwest Medical University.
On the downside, China seems to have gone full Hamas if reports of the impending conflict between Israel and Hamas are anything to go by. There is absolutely no mention of the immediate cause of the current situation, the slaughter of 1,400 Israelis on the Gaza border. And they have fallen (possibly wilfully), hook, line and fortune cookie for claims that Israel destroyed a hospital in Gaza. They are sending peace envoys to the region, which is probably another means of extending the BRI. Like all good communists, first they will offer to help with the oars, but their aim will be to end up at the tiller.
Finally, I met a fellow Scot at a conference, and he gave me one of those two-flag lapel pins with both the Saltire and the Chinese flag. This has been a source of much comment as people here love to see their flag. One person even looked at the other lapel badge I wear above it and commented on how much they liked it; “the clenched fist looks strong” they said “what does it represent?” Is this possibly the first sighting of the Free Speech Union logo in China? From such small beginnings…
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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When the General Election results come in, I shall spend a minute laughing heartily at the well-deserved demise of the Conservative Party.
A minute later the dread will very quickly set in that we have a Labour government.
Although that might be painful I am sure you will get a lot of chuckles over how KS fails to stop the boats, turn the economy around, solve rail and water problems, fail to stimulate housing and vitalise the NHS.
What makes you think he’s planning to do any of that? He’s planning to get elected. And because of this, his PR team has made a list of things he should take about and told him what to say about them. For all we can tell at the moment, we’ll be back in lockdown with a renewed mask mandate and vaccine assport the moment his King’s speech has been passed. There’s still an inquiry running to determine that happened to cause the regrettable early demise of the beautiful pandemic when Boris the Johnson implemented loads of Labour policies with Labour support and against his so-called own party.
There will be nothing to “chuckle” over as Kneel finally destroys the country aided and abetted by the satanic Bliar.
Just a random thought…why are the counting processes now spread over four days? Wall to wall coverage at el-Beeb with the hosts not just hot desking but possibly hot bedding. Whoops, surely not with their expense accounts.
It smacks of days of old with various Ceasars offering bread and circuses to their plebs. How times don’t change.
The fake Conservative Party have been managing quite well to destroy this country without Blair, or so we think.
Bliar the Demonic Liar already did the vital groundwork of destroying this country between 1997 and 2010 with the help of his jaw-dropping chum Gormless Brown.
Yukky bromancers Cameron & Clegg did nothing to reverse the Labour damage and continued to build on Bliar’s legacy of destruction in every possible way. Except for setting up a Brexit Referendum to get the result they didn’t want, Cameron and his chum, Osborne, were useless.
After Cameron did a cowardly runner, Cons could not even drum up a decent leader however hard they tried, and try they did – DisMay, Party-Boy Boris, Liz Trussed, Fishy – the last two unelected and disposable stand-ins.
And now we’ll get Bliar again later this year in the guise of Queer Stammer, formerly the worst, most negligent Director of Public Prosecutions in history.
We don’t need to talk about possible dystopias – we’ve been living in one for the last 27 years
Spot on ! Oh how I laughed when Alex Salmond came unstuck ! The rest is history I’m afraid , ending with Humza the Terrible walking away with 52K a year for life 😵💫
I know two people who don’t realise that the labour party aren’t what they remember from their younger days. They are pretty well off so will be hit hardest by the next labour government.
Turkeys voting for Christmas just like those young people yesterday vandalising a coach so as to stop it relocating illegal migrants.
Yes, it was just appalling— I couldn’t believe my eyes while watching those young people being such blind, brainwashed fools. Inside the coach, the hostile aliens were laughing up their sleeves at the “Useful Idiots”, as they call them.
If they haven’t realised by now that the so-called Labour party of today makes Keir Hardie revolve in his tomb on a permanent basis, they deserve all they get.
On a brighter note: Labour will find itself hip deep in the mess the Tories leave behind.
I doubt they will have much room for manoeuvre… particularly when the lights go out.
Its a grim prospect, but I will wait with some cheer when kneel has to concede he can’t and won’t meet any of their Net Zero goals, and the entire green and environmental movement will turn against him.
Reality can be such a bitch!
Labour’s honeymoon will last maybe a year tops, and then it will begin to dawn on people the horror they have unleashed with a Blairite Labour government.
We have had a continuity Labour Party in power since 2010 so what’s the big deal?
Is Rishi Sunak trying to do the best for the Conservative Party or has he been put in place (because that’s what happened) to destroy the Conservatives and make sure that Labour get the sort of gigantic majority that will allow them to ram through every single WEF policy and complete the transformation of Britain to the “new normal”?
That’s sort of what happened with Blair in 1997. Labour used the tidal wave of that election to start a complete transformation of Britain.
Points I have been making for many many months.
Yes, the current state of affairs with the Conservative Party has to be deliberate in my view and cannot, as some have naively suggested, be explained by incompetence.
That book by Nadine Dorries seems to point in that direction.
Many who voted Conservative thinking they were voting for actual Conservatives have been badly betrayed. They are clearly turning in large numbers to Reform who at this point in time at least appear to be right of centre. Time will tell on that ofcourse. I see now Sunak running around at the 11th hour like an estranged husband realising he has neglected and treated his wife badly for years and now with his bags packed and sitting on the pavement he is apologising profusely and begging for one last chance. ——-Sorry mate. —–“Taxi for Sunak”
Aye but the taxi will be to Davos.
Yes and just imagine the Tories have gone from an 80 seat majority in 2019 to Boris getting chucked out of his polling centre because he had no ID. —–Has any political party ever made such a pigs ear of it?
And yet there is Tice being photographed in Ukraine. A bit too establishment for me. And we still don’t know what business Obama had coming here some weeks back.
Nice one! 🙂
I’m shocked and stunned by the election results. I hadn’t realised that some people still vote Conservative.
I’d have voted conservative but there was not the option. There was a party calling itself “Conservative”, but that party is almost more left than Labour, so there must have been some mistake.
Hey M A k how have you wangled a vote?
Being working class I’ve always voted Labour, then i began to align more with the Tories, just as Labour isn’t Labour any more an the tories aren’t tory anymore! What a fecking mess this sorry pile of political tripe as become!
Tice is the (dyed) heir to Cameron.
8 – 10 million morons / nihilists will vote for Labour at the General Election.
Independents aside any vote placed is a vote for the Uniparty.
I don’t care who gets into power, the system is rotten to the core. I’ll be abstaining from the voting theatre that is the nothing more than a little pat on the heads of the proles. No, I’ll be shouting the loudest by not shouting at all. By being one of many (hopefully) that suddenly stop voting. That say in no uncertain terms: we have your number. And by doing so, we see each other. We see how many there are of us that understand it’s all a game for our self-appointed masters, and we’re no longer going to be their willing clowns. If we can see how many of us there are then we have a chance to start something that will change history. And they will see something that will wipe the smile off their faces. Keep away from the ballot box and encourage others to do the same. Let’s send them the clearest possible message we can – stick your f*ckin system where the sun don’t shine.
I couldn’t agree more.
Elections as they exist in the UK, and I would say pretty much every other country, are a system for manufacturing consent, by creating the illusion that those in power are doing what the population want them to do,. When in reality what they are doing is serving themselves and a much narrower constituency of much more powerful people.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And you can’t help feeling a mix of pity and disdain for those who don’t.
What’s the alternative?
A government that is a small fraction of what it is now coupled with much more personal responsibility.
One that is so small and has such limited powers that it isn’t worth anyone’s while hijacking it for their own purposes because it doesn’t really have much power to instruct people on what to do, or money to spend.
One that limits itself to keeping law and order.
But hardly anyone is up for that.
I agree.
Minarchism is far more appealing than the socialist regimes we have to endure in the UK. I’ve never understood the mindset of people who willingly want to give away increasing percentages of their hard earned money to politicians and bureaucrats. Do these people really trust the likes of Matt Hancock and Mark Drakeford to spend money wisely (and carefully)?
Too many have been conditioned to want an ever larger state, despite councils going bust. The government must do this, government must do that and so on and so fourth.
We have two choices:
That ‘something’ in the latter choice is up for debate, but it’s something that actually reflects the will of the masses not the elites. Personally, I’d opt for minimalist state power and a restriction on corporate size and power; a system that rewards hard working people & ingenuity but stunts greed. But that’s all a conversation for another time. The first thing to agree on, before any chance of change, is that we’ll no longer play the part of the perpetual village idiot by always gleefully dancing to their merry little tune.
If more attention was paid to the Independent, that would be a start. But with the corrupt MSM that is a fat chance.
Another point in what you raised about withdrawing the vote is, when you vote for a party, you are essentially giving them consent to govern.
Exactly. If the people en masse refuse to play their game, then no party has a legitimate mandate. They have no authority. At that point they are standing centre stage stark b*llock naked with their cheeks flushing bright red. The system will be exposed for what it is – a small handful of elites that do whatever they want, when they want, with zero interest in the wishes of the people. That is how we out them. It’s the first stage of doing something actually meaningful.
A patriotic nationalist party. Britain First is the most successful as far as they are allowed to be by government sabotagers and lackey police following their orders.
I would vote for them if they had a candidate in my constituency and can only wish them every success where they do stand.
Well, you look like being in the majority. In most local elections, most of the electorate doesn’t vote, but in the recent by-elections (like the Blackpool South one yesterday), even MP elections attract less than 50% turnout.
However, new parties are always hamstrung by the system, first past the post. Of course, they have had a go at partial proportional voting in Scotland & Wales, but no sign of it being adopted in any English election yet.
The government are supposed to do what the majority want. Look what the majority wanted over the last 4 years.
If enough people went along and destroyed their ballet as a protest to the system, the supposed elected government wouldn’t be legitimate. I’ve destroyed mine at the last two general elections. It is our duty to vote even if our so called democracy is a joke.
No, it is not our ‘duty’ to vote. We’ve been fed that BS all our lives and most still can’t shake the fact that it’s pure propaganda. They want you to vote so they can maintain the system they want you to play within. If you have a duty it is to your fellow citizens, not the system. That duty is to enact change, using whatever means, if the system becomes corrupt. Quite how anyone can know the system is corrupt, and believe the way to change the corrupt system is to use the mechanics of that corrupt system to politely ask it to not be so corrupt, is absolutely beyond me.
Anyway, people can carry on doing what they’ve always done, just don’t be bleating that you get what you’ve always got.
If you literally destroyed your ballot paper you didn’t vote at all.
The only way to have your non-vote counted and recorded is to ‘spoil’ your ballot paper by writing on it ‘None of the Above’ or something similar, if ruder.
I’ve attended counts and the party reps watch the tellers like hawks. The supervising Electoral Officer is obliged to collect, count and display all the spoilt papers to explain why each one has not been accepted as a valid vote.
The total number of spoilt papers is recorded and published along with the other results.
Reform did badly in my area, hardly got any votes. Conservatives did better but still lost by a mile to the useless Lib Dems. Nothing really changes.
Five years ago (2019) myself and a couple of friends set up an independent political party with the sole aim of taking away overall control from Oldham Labour Council. A disaffected Labour councillor advised us that we had no chance whatsoever as Labour ran the council with 43 councillors.
Now our combined social media groups have 10,000 followers although sadly not voters.
In five years we have achieved our aim.
Labour are still the biggest party in King Cotton but no longer in charge. Now down to 27 councillors. I forsee a massive rise in the demand for brown envelopes.
At last night’s count Debbie Abrahams (MP) and ‘Big’ Jim McMahon (MP) felt the need to convene an emergency meeting with the leader of the Council Arooj Shah so they are clearly very worried. Debbie Abrahams assured me in a recent letter that Oldham Council matters are NONE of her business and she doesn’t get involved. Presumably then she was discussing her next trip to Kashmir – that’s the furthemost border of her Oldham constituency.
Some people locally are making a fuss about the success of Independents in Oldham but this is a hollow victory as quite a few of the successes are down to plain old tribalism – the Pakistanis and ‘Deshis’ don’t get on and as in Rochdale the Gaza issue has caused massive fractures. I don’t think out and out tribal warfare is likely at this stage but it is not off the cards. If things do kick off it will as usual be blamed on the far right but our council is a scummy, tribal, Third World hate box just itching for a kick-off.
Labour are not going to have it all their own way at the General and the tories are definitely facing wipe-out but what is worryingly apparent is that the third world islamists are finding their feet and are starting to go it alone. And the big, big loosers in this will be Labour. They shipped ’em in and now they are going to be shipped out.
The first rings of Labour’s death Bell will be heard this weekend. They might score reasonably well, they might even reach their apogee in the General but thereafter their fall to insignificance and memory only will be inexorable.
As Labour becomes extinct the Last Rites can be read over the corpse of Great Britain.
Yes destroyed by its own hand , Suicide in Fact 😵💫
Starmer “respects” the views of Hamas supporters while he fails to stamp out anti-semitism throughout his party. I suggest the Israel state spends even more on arms because they are goiung to need it.
Those of us who do not support the murderous HAMAS and other anti-semitic movements must do our best to protect ourselves because the police will not do so.
If I were Starmer I’d be very worried. Sure, the Tories lost 161 seats but Labour only gained 64. That is far from election winning numbers, that is “people do not like Labour and do not want Labour” writ large.
I’m sticking with what I said a couple of years ago: a hung Parliament marginally in Tories favour. The reason for that is that Labour are extremely unpopular and most people vote for the pile of poop they are familiar with rather than a potentially worse pile of poop.
I’ll be voting for the only party that actually cares about our real lives: Reform.
However if you spoil your vote form in a certain way ( I’ve forgotten) the vote has to be counted which would be better than nothing 🤔
Spoilt votes are always counted.
A spoilt paper means nothing to a politician, only hard votes matter. If Reform came in third in the GE all parties in Parliament are going to be seriously worried about their seats next time around. They won’t even read the spoilt paper numbers or those who just stay at home.
Only the numbers on the board make any difference and that is why UKIP won us the right to an EU Referendum, if we had all just spoilt papers we’d be fully consumed by the EU right now.
I think you’re right. Low turnouts don’t seem to matter to the parties as long as their candidate wins. This is the weakness of First Past the Post as an electoral system.
But if every vote counted, it might be a different story.
It’s worse than nothing exactly because it will be counted. Why is this so immensely difficult to understand? It is (wrongly) claimed that we’re democratically ruled because people turn up for these meaningless box-ticking exercises, as measured by the so-called voter turnout, ie, the percentage of people entitled to vote who did actually vote. In ideal universe, it would drop to zero. Than, there would be some sort of problem in Westminster because who’s to govern if clearly nobody got elected because nobody voted. That’s obviously not going to work in practice because MP candidates can vote, too. Which means another nice outcome would be when nobody got elected because each candidate voted for himself and nobody else showed up. Generally, the smaller this number becomes, the better.
Spoiling a ballot paper means and achieves nothing. Absolute zero. If you put a big ‘X’ across the whole paper or write ‘None of the above’, whatever, your ballot gets lumped in with those who are too stupid to fill it out correctly. Spoilt papers get mentioned once and then forgotten about.
Until there is a ballot option of ‘None of the above’, you may as well belch into the hurricane for all the good it will do.
Only so if no-one knows that ballot papers were spoiled (deliberately). There is the possibility that some of those counting votes have a conscience.
There should be that choice of putting your cross in a specific ‘None of the Above’ box to show disaffection with all parties and maybe the number of such protestors would increase if the option were included.
But would the politicos care about a higher number of disaffected voters when they don’t actually care about real democracy and break manifesto promises with impunity?
What we need is a Referendum Party that will give every voter the opportunity to decide important policy. Switzerland operates this system with some success, I believe.
Just write NOTA across your ballot paper. It will be counted along with other ‘spoilt’ papers.
See my post.
Starmer needs to worry about George Galloway and his Party and the student’s latest revolt.
If America is anything to go by significant number of students fighting for the rights of Gaza easily manipulated by well financed hidden hands.
No political party is perfect, but when you look at our choices it’s either vote reform or don’t vote at all,..Voting for the uniparty will just make them feel important.. course, you could always vote green! 😫 🤢 🤮
The only sensible way to vote green is with a shotgun. These people don’t care if you vote ‘ironically’ for them, they care about getting into power to make £££ by being useful to their financiers. Apart from that, it’s Après nous la deluge.
“When I am dead the deluge may come for aught I care”, and “Ruin, if you like, when we are dead and gone”
Don’t give these green nut jobs any ideas about shotguns….If the World is ending they can justify anything. Why stop at throwing paint at art!
🙂
That was supposed to mean “The Greens are sensible choice for shotgun target practice and nothing else.”
When I heard how well Labour has done, I thought to myself, more people like cultural Marxism than I thought. Then I thought, to be fair, the turn out is probably very low.
Many people wouldn’t know what cultural marxism is. They still believe we live in a ‘democracy’.
Some guy on the radio was saying how Boris had a majority, then blew it. The Tories have failed us and deserve to go down. Has Boris really ‘failed’ when you consider he is far wealthier than in 2019.
Yes, he failed us all. So did Bliar. Increased wealth is no measure of political success, or serving your country well as I would prefer to call it.
That ‘public service’ politicos like to congratulate themselves on, hypocrites as most of them are.
“Reform Might be About to Wipe Out the Tories”
Too late! The Tories have already wiped themselves out.
That’s great news! I hope Richard Tice keeps his promise to field Reform candidates in every constituency come the general election.
Honestly, what have people got to lose by voting Reform, instead of the same-old, same-old Uniparty?
Hope, when it turns to disappointment.