Tag: China

Random Discourse – Cold Blooded China?

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The China double hit-and-run case is old news since it happened on October 13. Much have been said about the carelessness of the mother to the callousness of the 18 pedestrians and cyclists. Undoubtedly, those 18 people who did nothing to help were condemned and there was much discussion (if not debate) among China’s netizens about the degradation of “Chinese morality”. Even I had put the blame of the complete collapse of Chinese morality on the Cultural Revolution and the Communist Party. The only bright spot of this whole incident is that the old lady who helped refused to take any reward offered to her. Let me paraphrase what she said: “I will not take it because if I do, people will say I am doing it for the money.” Note, this is not some rich tai-tai but an old lady picking cupboard boxes to make a living.

I’ll admit I was outraged and appalled when I first read the news and saw the video. As time goes by I understand some of the reasons behind the callousness of the passerbys. It is not even the result of the bystander effect, but a fear that one might get into trouble.

Apparently, there were extortion cases where good Samaritans were accused of knocking into or pushing elderly folks, and even kidnapping children. These poor souls end up losing huge sums of money. In one bizarre case in 2006, a kind man in Nanjing named Peng Yu (彭宇) was sued in court by the very woman he helped. The accursed judge presiding over the case ruled that “common sense” suggested that Peng only took the woman to the hospital because he was guilty and ordered him to pay her medical expenses. From what I gathered, it cost Peng a good 40,000 Yuan (approx. S$8000). Similarly a Xu Yunhe (许云鹤) in Tianjin also lost over 100,000 Yuan (approx. S$20,000) for helping an elderly person who was jay walking. In a society where there is such gross miscarriage of justice, and where the people preyed upon each other, it is of no wonder why the two drivers who ran over her didn’t stop to help while everyone ignored poor Yue Yue as she lay dying on a narrow market street. After all, those who didn’t care probably felt that “no good deed goes unpunished” in China and netizens there even joked that the old lady helped because she does not read news on China’s Internet.

However, understanding why those 18 people didn’t help doesn’t mean I agree with the excuses, rational or reasons behind it. The excuses given reminded me of the Parable of the Good Samaritan from one of my Bible studies lessons, in which one of reasons given as to why the people didn’t help was to avoid the trouble that comes along with it. My pastor further explained that Jesus detests this because the priests and Levites in that period no longer understand the spirit of God’s spiritual laws, but were repeatedly finding excuses in the word of the law to justify their actions and excuse themselves from doing what is right.

Now, even when we do not look at the moral aspect, I would like to point out at times even animals do better than human beings in helping their own kind in need. Look at these videos, for example:

  1. A friend in need is a friend indeed

  2. Battle at Kruger

In the first example, a gecko made an effort to help another of its kind on its own and it is clear how apprehensive it is when attacking the snake. In the second example, a herd of buffaloes battled the lions to save a calf. All of these actions come with a threat to the very lives of those which offered to help.

I am not linking these videos to “teach” everyone a moral lesson, but it makes me feel ashamed after looking at these videos. We are less than beasts (禽兽不如) when our actions are less than that of common beasts. If we cannot be as heroic as the gecko in the first video, then at least be like the buffaloes in the second. If we believe that we can’t be of any good on our own, or that our strength alone is too feeble, then call for help. Certainly, doing what is right in whatever way appropriate is better than doing nothing at all. The old lady who helped did not even hesitate when she dragged poor Yue Yue to the side of the road.

Before I end, please look at this video. And remember what the police officer said:

Go proactive. Take action. Different people, different action.

Short Takes

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Sometime ago, I was having a chat with Nicole about filing tax returns. Even though my tax returns are automatically filed, I decided to log into ‘myTaxPortal’ on the IRAS site to confirm that. As I did so, I noticed the tax calculator – an online tool which allows me to calculate the amount of income tax I need to pay for 2010.

Out of curiosity, I transferred the figures from my IR8A onto the tax calculator. I was a little surprised to see that the total amount of taxes I need to pay for the year comes was a mere 2.5% of what I earn in 2009. I also found out that the 20% mandated CPF savings actually serves as a tax relief as well, though some might consider CPF to be as good as money ‘given’ to the government gahmen. I realized that all these years I have never bothered with the details of my tax returns, and I had merely just fill in the figures blindly.

Still, 2.5% of this year’s income is a surprising low tax rate, and that probably explains why there is this relative lack of of welfare in Singapore. It was rather sobering to realize that I lived in one of the countries with the lowest tax rates. Christopher aka Modeus pointed out that this is a fact that few Singaporeans appreciate while many complain endlessly about COE, Road Tax, ERP and GST. In my opinion the first three is more or less self inflicted with a car purchase, though I wouldn’t deny that adds on to the costs of businesses which require transports. That’s not mentioning I am a big fan of the ERP.

As for GST, the fact remains that even if you spend every single cent of your disposable income (i.e. 80% of your income), the total amount taxed will only be 5.6% of that year’s income. Even when I add the 2.5% I paid as Income Tax, that’s just about 8.1% of my total income for the year. That’s not mentioning that since I won’t be spending every cent I earn, the real effective tax rate would be far lower than that! And that’s something I can be happy about.

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I read this on the New York Times recently: Members of Congress from both parties sought to put more pressure on China to allow an increase in the value of its currency, saying Beijing’s policy of holding the value down to give China an edge in export markets was holding back job creation in the United States.

In short, the Americans are accusing the Chinese of currency manipulation. I’ll admit I know nuts about finance and economics, so I am totally confused as to how that came about. After all my understanding about economics and finance is as good as Mahathir who thinks currency trading involved traders trading physical bags of different currency.

I suppose that when the Chinese pegs the Renminbi (or Chinese Yuan – CNY) to the US dollar (USD), that means that as the Obama Administration prints more money (which it did, since it’s broke and has no money to bail the banks out), Chinese currency would have necessary appreciate against the USD. For China to maintain the current exchange rate, China will simply print more money as well because I don’t know any better way than this. In short, China has definitely printed more money since it had pumped a lot of money into its own economy last year to mitigate the impact of the crisis that originates from… well… the US. Where is all the money going to come from when China is spending money on infrastructure, while also buying US Treasury bonds?

Based on my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the state of affairs here, I think the real currency manipulator is the US. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the US would like to maintain a strong USD policy. That simply means the US expects everyone to start printing more money – except well, China. If China is going to do that it’s the equivalent of slamming the brakes on its economy and we all know what disastrous consequences would result from that! Now, I call that evil.

Next, China is the second largest buyer of US Treasury bonds – i.e. China is the second largest creditor (after Japan) of the US gahmen’s debts. I take it that the reason developing (aka poorer) China is lending money to developed (richer) US is to preserve value of its own currency.

Since these loans are denominated in USD, that means when the US gahmen pays the Chinese gahmen it would be in USD. If China has appreciated its currency, it would suddenly discovered that it might have gotten the short end of the deal because after making the exchange back to CNY, the Chinese maybe left with less money than it paid for the bond. Just who lends people money, and get back less than its principal sum even after interest? Maybe to friends and when you lend friends money you generally can forget about getting it back anyway. Not to mention that it would be hard for China to consider the US a friend in the first place!

In short, the freaking Americans are telling China: ‘I am expecting you to forgo the interest you are going to make from the loans you gave to me so I can create jobs for my people. Yep, I am saying that you should be paying to create jobs in the US for Americans. If you aren’t gonna do that, I am gonna punish you.’

The Americans probably forgot that as Russell Peters once said the Chinese is the one race that is best at making money out of someone else. I am glad China stayed put and told the Americans to fxxk off.

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I recently made the comment that ‘Apple is a piece of shit company that’s only good at packaging its low tech stuff as being more superior… and has always resort to legal action to harm competitors who simply think they could do the same with their own products.’

I am basically saying Apple makes no technical innovation but the way I worded it made it sound like Apple does not innovation at all. When read that way, obviously such a comment pushes the limits of patience in everyone and it isn’t going to earn me any friends other than those who already hate Apple as much as I already do. In no time someone disagreed that Apple is not doing any innovation. He pointed out that Apple was ‘the first’ to put GUI (Graphical User Interface for the uninitiated) and the mouse in its own computers, and also ‘the first’ to bring in the power of linux/unix into the the hands of everyone.

It is a fair view from someone I have always know to be fair in his opinions. On retrospect, he was right to point out that Apple innovated personal computing or the way we use personal computers. Unfortunately we are disagreeing on different perspectives. As far as I am concerned, I was simply pointing out that Apple made no technological innovation and I quickly went into defensive since none of these – GUI, the mouse and even Linux / Unix – were invented by Apple.

It is a fact that Xerox beat Apple to in both the mouse and GUI as far as application of these technologies are concerned. Unfortunately for Xerox, its focus was more for research and business application, and not for the mass consumer market. And as for Linux in specific, my perception of it is that it was something like Unix, but created for use on personal computers because someone had enough of Microsoft’s buggy products.

From my point of view, if Apple or any of the iFreak faithful of Steve Jobs Stiff Drop was to claim Apple as a technology innovator, it will be as good as Nazi Germany claiming credit for the rocket when all it did was find application for it in warfare, while it was the Chinese who invented it and the Americans who put several men on the moon with it.

I’ll still stand by my comment.

Photos from Huanglong – Pandas!!

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Some of the photos my mother took when she was over in Sichuan (四川).

She didn’t take too many as the entire holiday mood was dampened by the earthquake. The pictures of the giant pandas were taken in Huanglong (黄龙). The others were taken at assorted places around Sichuan.

They were unable to enter Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟) as the local public security (gong’an 公安) officers were concerned that the roads might not be safe as there’s possibility of aftershocks and landslides. Those who insisted on going in were allowed to do so after they sign some kind of documents indicating that they will not hold anyone responsible for any mishaps including their deaths.

My mother informed me that one of the cities she visited – Mian Yang (绵阳) suffered large scale devastation after they departed. In fact, my uncle was pretty adamant he saw one of the schools with many student deaths when he was there.

Either way, my uncle and my two aunts all came back a little sick as a result of the anxiety and fear they felt at the area. The entire region was quite chaotic as the Chinese authorities tried to balance incoming air traffic and outgoing ones. Some people on the flight out had slept two days in the airport trying to get an air ticket out and flights were held back and delayed as priority was given to incoming rescue teams from other parts of China and the world.

Fortunately for my mother, the local tour guide managed to arrange with the tour agency to put my mother and relatives in a proper hotel while they try and get tickets to get out. There were some unfortunate souls from other tour groups which end up in hotels whereby they spent most o their time in the open anyway.


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Earthquake in China [Update]

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UPDATE:

My mom has took her mobile phone with her to China! Yaaaaay!! But unfortunately I have no luck raising her on the phone. So I went back to find out which agency she booked her package with. I searched high and low for the invoice and stuff but can’t find it, but fortunately, my mother has passed me the AIG Global Travel Insurance ‘booklet’ which has the chop of the travel agency on it. And she called back at 22:31hrs.

So Anyway, I had googled and found the website of the agency and look through the tour packages. Since my mother took the 9 days tour package with my aunts, I checked the itinerary and discovered that on day 3 my mother should be now quite some distance away in Zhangjiajie (张家界) [See map below]. (Ya, beat me up for not having the contacts of my cousins and my aunts as well. My mistake for failing to be close to the maternal side of my family.)

I hope am glad the agency is following the itinerary closely, as I continue to feel burdened by my failure to contact my mother. I am going to call the travel agency tomorrow morning to find out if they are in contact with their guides over in China.

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for my relatives over there. Please keep them in prayers until I receive confirmation of them being safe and sound in China their return to Singapore, as after shocks are expected in China.

Richter Scale 7.8 Earthquake in China

An earthquake of scale 7.8 hit Wenchuan prefecture (汶川县) in China’s Sichuan province (四川省) at 14:28 today. According to the news services in China, the tremors are felt as far as Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, Nan-ning, Hanoi, Taipei and even Bangkok.

The current situation is unknown. I have tried to call the Singapore Consulate in Chengdu to no avail. Meantime, my mother is in that region and uncontactable because she did not bring her mobile. I hope she is safe as she should now be further away from Chengdu (成都) and more towards the Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟) region. I undertand that region is mountainous so I am quite concerned with the possibility of landslides.

Brothers- and sisters-in-Christ, please keep my mother, aunts and uncles who are in that area in prayer until they are safe. (I thank all of you, for sharing this burden with me.)

Will update when I get more information. A rough map of the epicenter here: