Weblog of xuefei

Snow in Stockholm is still a lot. And outside stockhold there are even more.

As there is always danger that something will come down from the top of the roof while will be like a landslide, there are many yellow signs to say RASRISK, danger.

A few years ago an accident happened. A boy was killed due to the falling ice. Later the owner was sued and was punished with heavy fine.

Since then a regulation was made to say that owners of the house or roof should be responsible to warn people about the danger and if they don't ,they will be responsible for any danger.

Thus, nowadays, it is easy to see the signs and to see people are going to put a sign or check if it is as dangerous.

The other day when we walked in the street, a big crane came to the street and tried to get rid of the ice on the roof.

More care will result in less accident.

     I have determined to reduce weight by 5 kilos and i realized that within five months.

What's the secret?

Change of food sequence.

I eat porridge or musli in the morning and big meal for lunch, but in the evening I always eat a meal which is very proportional.

my swedish dietist told us to eat a plate of food which has 50% of vegetable and 25% of staple food and 25% of meat.

My Chinese doctor said the sequence of eating also counts a lot.

He said we should eat vegetable first, and then staple food and then meat so that the digestion is much better for the health.

After five months experiment, my husband got an approval from the doctor that his bloodfat has decreased.

It's proved that this method is workable.

Unfortunately, when we went to Spain to have honey moon, we had CHinese buffet every evening. After a weak, all the past five months efforts went in vain. I gained back to 65 Kilo, or even 66. and he went up to 83 kg.

What shall I do? On the New Year we invited friends to have dinner or go to friends home to eat. These kind of collective eating also ventured overeating.

Finally I decide to eat big lunch and small dinner. So for lunch I eat meat and a lot of bread. But dinner I eat salad, a mixture of pasta, fish or a little meat, but a lot of vegetables. After two days, I lost a kilo.

I think this momentum is going on!

I guess after two months, I will be back to 62 again.

 

 China and Africa

China and Africa have a long term friendly relationship since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Western media seems to give an incomplete picture and background about China and Africa so that it sounds like suddenly China starts to go to Africa in order to get oil and other resources. It is true that China has closer relations with Africa, but it is not that suddenly China goes to Africa and only pursue oil and other resources there.

First, China has solid political relations with African countries since the Mao Zedong period. In the 1960s, when China faced the sanctions or sealing off by America who was fiercely anti-communist, Chinese leader Mao Zedong divided the world into three parts, that’s the famous division of the world by the first world including the two super powers America and Soviet Union and the second world including UK and all the other western industrialized countries as well as Japan and Singapore. China was sided with the vast third world countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Mao’s strategy has always been helping the weaker people but united them so that they could become stronger together. (However, although in the west, even in Africa many people still use the word the third world, when I was in CRI we also used to have a program called ‘In the third world,’ we changed it to reports on Developing countries.

Now we only say developed and developing countries.)

Then China generously provided a lot of assistance to African countries even though Chinese were in hunger in the 1960s and 1970s. With great difficulty, China still helped build Tanzania-Zambia railways, Zimbabwe Stadium, hospital, highways and many other infrastructures in many other African countries. Due to political and humanitarian reasons, China helped African countries get independence and establish their own countries. Even though China now is focusing on economic development and don’t mention the past that much, many old African leaders still mention that and don’t forget China’s assistance.

When I was in Zimbabwe in 1998, Chinese then foreign minister now vice premier Tang Jiaxuan visited Zimbabwe and he told us that to keep good relations with African countries is a tradition of China since Premier Zhou Enlai was in charge of foreign affairs. And in practice every year, right after the New Year, Chinese leaders including foreign minister or president or premier, their first visits have always been African countries. In theory, as I got my thesis at Renmin university of China was China’s Diplomacy, I know that Chinese foreign policy has always been based on Premier Zhou Enlai’s idea. And at that time, we called it ‘Yi bian dao’, meaning only having good relations with Asian, African and Latin America, they are friends.’ Those donation or assistance were friendly donation without seeking any payback.

But after China’s reform and opening up in 1978, China considered that pure currency or food donation didn’t work very well. It is like to ‘give people a fish’, but very soon, they used up the money, sometimes, it even raised corruption among African countries. Thus, Chinese government think of teaching them ‘how to fish’. That is to ask African’s what kind of project they want to construct, or ask them how they plan to spend the money. ‘Give me specific projects, I will fund it.’ That is why as I remembered that when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Zimbabwe in 1996, he brought 200 million yuan or about 14 million pounds. But the money wasn’t spent till 2000 because Zimbabwan side was very slow in providing project list.

I think when Clinton visited Africa, he also mentioned trade instead of pure donation because the effect is better.

Since Sino-African Forum was established in 2000, Sino-African relations have entered a new period of development.

 

Within the framework of the forum, China has exempted the debts of 31 African countries including the least developed countries(LDC). Their debts to China amounted to 10.9 billion yuan or about 1.36 billion US dollars; China has given 28  African LDC countries who have diplomatic relations with China the treatment of zero tariff of their products exported to China; China has helped 49 African countries build 720 sets of projects with the donation from China; Chinese companies contracted 58 projects with preferential loans in 26 African countries.

 

Over the past 6 years, China has provided various training to 10 thousand African people and encouraged Chinese investors to invest in Africa and open factories there. So far, China’s investment in Africa has amounted to 6.27 billion US dollars.

 

“These measures have promoted the economic development in Africa, increased employment opportunities there, sent the technologies that are suitable for Africa, improved African countries’ capacity in self-development and contributed to the  improvement of their people’s living standards.” said Chong Quan, spokesman of Ministry of Commerce.

 

Chong said this was also welcomed by the African governments and people and had promoted the healthy and steady development of Sino-African cooperation in commerce and trade.

 

In my opinion, China’s method of helping Africa is relatively effective so that those countries can change their mindset from fighting each other to trading with each other.

 

Of course, China realizes that there is great potential of resources in Africa too and they like to tap that potential on a trading basis. This will definitely provide peace and employment to them. It’s better than simply criticizing them for not being democratic or they must hold democratic elections immediately. Things take time. There must be certain conditions so that a better system will be established. Political changes need economic, social and educational conditions, I think.

 

Personally speaking, it doesn’t mean Chinese people will love better African people than they love the westerners. I think it is purely because it is hard to have better communications between China and the west that make China unite the weaker countries who have had similar backgrounds or the same sufferings in the past.

Maybe it is easy to forget history for the west, but I remember when I was in New Zealand, a driver asked me about the Tian’anmen incident in 1989 in Beijing and I said it has been a long time, 10 years ago, but he said it is not long. His memory is still fresh. That was probably the only impression he had about China.

Meanwhile in China, due to their strong desire of getting a better life, many people forget their political principle or ideology and turn to another extreme of pursuing material life.

Mao Zedong’s thought was to ‘establish a better building, you must demolish the old one first’. And that was the cultural revolution. All the natural economic development was wiped out due to leftist ideas. After Mao’s death, people go to another extreme of pursuing money. And this process started slowly but getting faster and faster and in the end it can’t stop. I guess we need another 30 years to step on a stable and rational road on both economic and social development as well as establishing various necessary systems to guarantee a stable and secure society.

Many people think this is a special period for China and when every system is complete, the development will slow down but then the chance of getting rich overnight will not happen either. That’s why many people are taking all the opportunities they can to develop.

But I think Chinese leaders know the pressure from social and environmental aspects. And a series of reforms are also going on. Again things take time. It can’t change suddenly. Even if it changed on the top, it will take 10 years to change at the bottom.

One example is to absorb investment. It happened along the Shanghai area after 1992, and in my village area in northeast China, to absorb investment happened in 2003. So the policy reaches all the public taking about 8 years in China.

Again, back to China and Africa, I think you are right in the long run, it is just a matter of time. Now Chinese investors are still not as strong as the western investors and their investment in Africa is still very minimum compared western investment in China. Chinese labor is still in the surplus, thus China doesn’t have the capacity to fully or in large proportion to hire Africans. But in many ways if conditions are ripe, that will happen. Currently as far as I know, many business only started from shipping goods produced in China to Africa and selling them there. When they have enough investment and establish factories in Africa, they will hire more.

When I was in Zimbabwe, I had a friend who came from Northeast China. She stayed there doing all kinds of trade. At the same time, she opened a clothes shop and a sewing class to teach local people how to make clothes and it was warmly welcomed. But China is still not rich enough to have more investment there. The government is encouraging those better companies to go abroad to invest, but again it takes time.