12/28/23 - Weekly Roundup!
A while ago, China banned the use of imported medical (and medical equipment) in its hospitals. And there was a whole slew of posts from medical workers panicking, because the Chinese-made drugs they’re working with simply don’t do anything. One post that stuck out to me was from an anaesthesiologist, posting from an OR, all like, “I’ve given this patient 4.5 times the normal dose now, and he’s still awake. What the fuck do I do.” A lot of people report getting an IV drip of Chinese antibiotics for a week straight and not seeing any effects, only for their symptoms to clear up the second they take the same antibiotic, but from an American manufacturer.
Since then, the government has come out with an announcement about vastly increasing China’s national health insurance coverage. But after close investigation, it was discovered that almost all of this extra coverage is going towards covering intravenous Chinese Medicine.
That’s where you take Chinese medicinal herbs, like liquorice and seaweed, and boil it into medicine, and then shoot that shit straight into people’s veins.
If you don’t know anything about medicine, this generally kills the shit out of people.
They’re mostly using it on terminal cancer patients who are desperate enough to try injecting liquorice straight into their veins, so it’s hard to tell exactly how many people are dying from these prescriptions. But at least one post I saw mentioned about 50-60 deaths from allergic reactions in one hospital since the policy came out like two weeks ago.
The Dalian Marathon has been in deep waters lately, from accusations that they’ve rigged their matches. In the final stretch of the marathon, there was a small group of 7 runners in the lead, 6 of them Africans and one Chinese man. In the final stretch, the last dash, suddenly, a pickup truck turns right into the group and drives in the middle of them, cutting off the Chinese man from the rest of the group, so he has to pause and run around the truck to catch up. Based on his past times, he could’ve easily come in second or third, but he walked away seventh in this competition.
The marathon runners claim, “Oh no, the driver just screwed up.” But people don’t buy it, with how the truck turned completely out of nowhere and then came to a dead stop in the middle of the runners, in the middle of the road for no apparent reason.
People speculate that Dalian is rigging its marathons because a lot of Chinese marathons try to raise their international prestige by getting runners from poverty-stricken African nations to come compete. And often times, when these runners win, they don’t get paid the full price. The agent who hooked them up with the race will take 80-90% of it, and the remaining would still be a nice payout for someone from the poorest parts of Africa. Whereas if a Chinese man won the race, they’d actually have to pay him the full amount.
China has announced that starting from the 1st of January, 2024, they’re going to cease publicising court rulings on the internet, instead keeping it in a closed archive only accessible for people who work in the legal field.
This is probably due to the frequent cases of controversy over two similar cases being issued completely different sentences because one of the defendants is richer than the other. Or cases of people being convicted with clearly not enough evidence. Or cases of mindblowingly large amounts of cash or valuables being robbed out of the houses of police chiefs. Or cases that expose how ridiculous China’s laws are, like the man who was sentenced to death for stabbing a guy in the process of raping his mom.
China’s also issued some new policies about regulations on the gaming industry. The most important change is that in order to publish a game in China, you need a permit from the government. And applying for the permit is an agonisingly slow process that can take years. In order to save on development costs, a lot of gaming companies had been mass-applying for permits, and then slapping one out of the warehouse onto any new games they make. And now they’re threatening to close that loophole. They’re also setting a hard limit on how much money people are allowed to spend on a game. The exact amount hasn’t been decided on, but it’s already caused a panic in the market and caused gaming companies’ stocks to plummet.
However, as the stock market tanked, the government panicked too, because I guess they weren’t…expecting that result? So now they’re promising that this is all still negotiable, they’re still in the brainstorming stage, everyone calm down. So I guess only time will tell whether or not Genshin is going to survive.
A lot of former Falun Gong believers are coming out with accusations of abuse and exploitation within Falun Dafa, which you’d think would be excellent propaganda for the CCP, except I guess even negative discussion about Falun Gong is just as censored as positive discussion. So no news of this has reached China at all.
This isn’t an official government policy or anything, but apparently, a lot of big economics bloggers and current events bloggers in China have received a message from the CCP that if they don’t stop being pessimistic about the Chinese economy, there’ll be “consequences”.
I guess to demonstrate what those “consequences” are, a relatively famous blogger in China who writes info-guides on how to install a VPN (and other cool things you can do with a computer) and compiles and translates western news about China (basically doing the opposite of what I do) has been arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison.
Although there’s been a lot of “uplifting and inspirational” news out of Gansu after the earthquake there, it has been really hard for me to get my hands on a good video of the precise aftermath to show you guys. Apparently, this is because the government has been deliberately censoring videos of Gansu, showing only footage of small mountains of FEMA supplies, and soup kitchen lines.
This is because when videos first came out after the earthquake, apparently, a lot of people on the internet were absolutely shocked that there were still places in China where people lived in mud huts. It was considered very embarrassing for the CCP, who claimed to have ended poverty in China a couple of years ago. I guess nobody ever looked into what the CCP defines as “poverty”, which is the UN’s definition of absolute poverty—living under 1 USD a day. I actually do believe their numbers, that they’ve ended poverty in China, at least as far as their census can reach. But living on 1.5 USD a day still means you live in mud huts or just natural caves.
Apparently, there’s been a lot of controversy involved in the relief efforts too. There were stories that due to low temperatures in the area (below -10C), they were giving people completely frozen bottles of water, and old people were having to stuff the bottle of ice into their coats to warm it up, so they can feed it to babies. There are already Chinese Ebay posts selling winter coats that have been identified as having been donated to the Gansu earthquake. There have been very little proper heating provided, and people were having to keep warm by lighting bonfires. And despite large Muslim demographics in the area, none of the food being provided are halal.
Perhaps due to these embarrassments, the government has absolutely banned NGOs from trying to help in the area, explicitly warning a lot of Chinese charitable organisations to stay out of the area and just send supplies or money. Preferably money.
Due to mounting local government debt, there have been rumours floating out of most states that aren’t Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangdong, that government workers aren’t getting paid. The worst case by far is Tianjin, where the public transport system has stopped running, and the government is declaring bankruptcy and admitting that they can no longer afford to supply the whole city with heat in the winter. There are a lot of stories of teachers not getting paid for 3 months, or street sweepers not getting paid for 6 months, or government workers getting their bonuses cut and everything.
Note that because almost all hospitals in China are public hospitals, this means that there’s also the occasional news story about doctors and nurses not getting paid or getting paid half as much too. And they’re increasingly relying on commission and kickbacks in order to afford to live (because doctors don’t get paid much in China to begin with, making only roughly 50-60K a year if you’re not top of the field). Hence why they’re so eager to prescribe all those Chinese Medicine injections.
Looks like next year China will live through interesting times.