George Judson's Blogs
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Dispatch from China: Wrestling with Health care
Reporter's Notebook Like the United States, China is wrestling with its health care systems. And party officials are looking to the U.S. for good ideas as they struggle to provide universal primary care for 1.3 billion people, from affluent city dwellers to nomads in poor western provinces. Imagine you're in the capital of a country discussing health policy with a top government health official. He's a doctor and a molecular biologist. And he's campaigning on health care reform. Welcome to Beijing. China road trip I'm on a stop here with a dozen other senior journalists meeting with some of China's top party officials as part of a tour organized by the International Reporting Project. Today, is our official China day. After we meet with the Ministry of Health, we will head to the State Council Information Office to meet Minister Wang Chen, who oversees the...
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Dispatch from China: Polluted Lakefront Property
Reporter's Notebook A high-end housing development next to one of China's most polluted lakes is just one example of the country's battle between economic progress and the environment On our last official day we drove to the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, to look at a dead lake. Yunnan, in China's southwest, touches Tibet, Burma, Laos and Vietnam. As a border province, it has many ethnic minorities. Green Lake Park, in Kunming's center, is filled with music as different groups perform their music and dances. Because of the border, Yunnan also has heroin, and was the first province to have a large number of AIDS cases, from needle use. It's unclear how many people in China have AIDS. We heard different numbers, and even the highest \"official\" one -- from the Minister of Health -- seems implausibly low: 740,000, in a population of 1,300,000,000. ...
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Dispatch from China: Powered by Solar
Reporter's Notebook A tour of the Hope Solar factory in Beijing reveals a budding business in alternative energy and tough competition for global competitors, especially in the U.S. Today's destination: the Beijing Hope Solar Power Co., about 25 miles southeast of the central city. Far enough out, there were rice paddies in the neighborhood. China is first in the world in hydropower, first in solar, third in wind but with a bullet. As it turned out, Hope Solar is not why China leads in its category. But it offers a couple of lessons for U.S. manufacturers. Our tour began with a quick walk-through of the factory. Quick, because there wasn't much to it. The photovoltaic silicon wafers are manufactured in another Hope Solar plant. In Beijing, they're inspected for flaws and assembled into panels. There's not a lot of machinery. It's people assembling stuff. ...
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Dispatch from China: Pandas and the Rural Economy
Reporter's Notebook Managing editor George Judson is off to Panda country in China's rural city of Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan Province where poor residents are struggling to keep up with China's roaring economy. We arrived a few days ago in Chengdu, a municipality of 6 million that is the capital of Sichuan Province. This is \"rural\" China -- due west is Tibet. Compared with Beijing, Chengdu does feel provincial. It's a feeling... Chengdu lacks Beijing's monumental avenues and squares, the fashion sense is not as sharp, much of the population gets about on motorbikes (Beijing banned them years ago, because of their pollution). And the traffic is crazy. It's easy to believe you're surrounded by millions of new drivers. Pedestrians have few rights -- this afternoon I saw a taxi bully a tiny schoolgirl (maybe six?) out of its way. \"Merging\" is a matter...
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