The lessons of North Korea

Juche Monument, Pyongyang, North Korea (aka DPRK) with a human standing in front, for scale. There should be an index that measures the size of national monuments. I can't help but speculate that the larger a nation's monuments, the more authoritarian is the state. I think of the pyramids, and the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome. Perhaps there are other, stronger, correlations. Maybe the larger monuments indicate a stronger state elite (elites who build things to impress the masses with their power, and to get the masses to be "proud" of the state--i.e., the elite). And maybe this is all too crude. After all, the US seems to have had its peak of monument building well before its recent peak of centralized power. The biggest monuments in DC arethe Washington Monument (built between 1848-1885) and the Lincoln Memorial (1914-1922).

The DPRK is sociologically fascinating. Social scientists spend much of their time showing that people's choices are shaped by the culture and society (well, except for economists, who still believe in the autonomous individual). When we face a society where choices are really constrained, like the DPRK, then we are forced to recognize that choice is, in fact, important in most modern societies. Yes, all societies limit our choices and mold us in certain ways. But the DPRK is at an extreme. The task of combining structure and agency is never easy, and new terms such as "structuration" don't help much, except to highlight the challenge. Every society is weird in some way. The DPRK's weirdness forces anyone who dismisses choice and markets as not important to recognize that freedom to choose actually does matter. It is an exotic culture of our time that shows the limits of what humans can bear and do, a fascinating example, and one in the end that highlights why some level of individual freedom is in fact necessary and desirable.

Hong Kong Has "The Most Efficient Health Care System In The World"

The Huffington Post has an interesting article that shows that according to a recent Bloomberg ranking, Hong Kong has the most efficient health care system in the world. The real point of the story is to show that the US is 46th of 48 countries: 

"In other words, the world's richest country spends more of its money on health care while getting less than almost every other nation in return."

Of course, all such rankings depend on how variables are measured. In this case, though I'm happy to have Hong Kong's success recognized, I think the measure is a bit too primitive.

Each country was ranked on three criteria: life expectancy (weighted 60%), relative per capita cost of health care (30%); and absolute per capita cost of health care (10%). Countries were scored on each criterion and the scores were weighted and summed to obtain their efficiency scores.

So life expectancy is the only measure of health outcome.  A bit primitive, but not invalid.

The main message from the story is that all the top (most efficient) systems are heavily state controlled, and are universal.

Despite being considered by some as having the freest economy in the world, Hong Kong's universal health care system involves heavy government participation; its own health secretary calls public medicine the "cornerstone" of the system. Public hospitals account for 90 percent of in-patient procedures, while the numerous private options are mostly used by the wealthy.

Many Americans will just dismiss this. Nothing will shake their faith in the "free" market.

Hong Kongers vs Mainlanders, episode 1375: The Case of the Suitcases in the Nullah

Yesterday I heard a story on the radio that made no sense. Two passengers took a taxi from the airport to Lok Ma Chau, the Hong Kong border with the Mainland. Along the way, the two passengers realized that the Hong Kong dollars they had would not be enough to pay for the fare. When they got to the destination, a dispute ensued and the enraged taxi driver drove off with the passengers' suitcases and threw them in a nullah. (A "nullah" is one of those interesting words in Hong Kong English [and perhaps it exists elsewhere in the Commonwealth, but not in the US] that means drainage canal or ditch. In present-day Hong Kong, nullahs are all cement-lined. With all the rain we've had recently, they are all full of water).

The story left me perplexed: how could a taxi driver get so angry?!

Today I read the story in the newspaper, and got more details. Now I understand how such an incident could happen. Not that the taxi driver was right, but the story makes sense, and is not an odd and bizarre tale.

The key pieces of information that were left out of the radio story were: 1) one of the passengers was a Mainlander; 2) he tried to pay in RMB; 3) the taxi driver wanted a HK$1 = 1 RMB exchange rate, when the official and market rate is 1 RMB = 0.79 RMB; 4) the Mainlander refused.

The Mainland passenger offered to pay 0.90 RMB to the HK$, but the taxi driver refused. At the official exchange rate, the HK$280 fare should have cost 220 RMB, and the passenger was offering 250 RMB. How could a difference of  RMB 30 (less than US$5) lead to such a dispute which found the taxi driver hurling the passengers' suitcases with HK$60,000 in electronic and photographic equipment into a nullah?!

Here's how. From the Mainland passenger's point of view, the RMB is "real money" and he sees Hong Kong as a part of China so he thinks the taxi driver should accept RMB. He feels he is compromising by offering 12 percent more than the actual fare. Plus, he is splitting the difference between the actual 0.79 rate and the 1 to 1 equivalency that the driver wanted.

But from the taxi driver's point of view, here is a traveler who is expecting him to accept a foreign currency. Since when do clients insist on paying in foreign currencies? The arrogance! Sure, Hong Kong is part of China, but he cannot go to his local supermarket or 7-11 and pay with RMB. Only shops that cater to Mainland tourists in accept RMB in Hong Kong. In fact, it is not uncommon in shops selling candy, newspapers and trinkets at the train station, for example, to charge 1 RMB for 1 HK. It is a hassle for the driver to accept "foreign" currency (and it is foreign for him) that he has to convert somewhere in order to use it. And when he goes to covert the money, he will be charged a commission on that conversion. If the passenger is careless enough to travel without enough Hong Kong money, he should expect to pay a bit more for the currency exchange. The exchange kiosks in the airport charge a lot more than the official rate, in fact.

Thus, a story that initially seemed senseless and bizarre is in fact just one more chapter in the ongoing saga of Hong Kongers vs Mainlanders, with both sides not really understanding the other, and convinced the other is not respecting them. The Mainlander is quoted in the SCMP as saying, "I thought Hong Kong was safer than the Mainland. I never thought this kind of thing would happen in Hong Kong." He views this as a case of "disorder" or even lawlessness, and does not see how he created half the dispute.

The taxi driver was originally charged with stealing the luggage, but claims he tossed it in the nullah in a rage. It will be interesting to see if they do find it in the nullah, or in a pawn shop. It is possible, after all, that the possibility of stealing the luggage was also part of the reason the dispute developed like this. Though Hong Kong taxi drivers are overwhelmingly honest, the newspaper article does note a few cases of cheats and frauds that got caught. One thing Hong Kong does have is inspectors who take taxis to test for honesty. That is in part why the story of this fight seemed so preposterous and bizarre when I first heard the partial outline on the radio.

And now you know, the rest of the story.

Everything is Verboten

This is a snapshot of a sign in the middle of the large lobby of the Esther Lee Building at CUHK. In case it is hard to read, it says, "Any activity here without authorization is not allowed." It is signed "EMO" [Estate Management Office] "Housekeeping and Building Management Section."

This strikes me as a tad authoritarian. It reminds me of the principle for parking in Hong Kong: you can only park where parking is expressly designated as allowed, not anywhere that it is not forbidden. Rather than specify what it is that EMO is trying to avoid, they avoid everything, and make everyone seek EMO permission to use the space. There is no number to call to get permission; the message is clearly: go away.

Since this is the lobby to many auditoriums and concert venues, it is clear that EMO cannot have students rehearsing their "dem-beats" (a form of cheering) in the lobby. At the same time, such a sign is not very welcoming to visitors, I would think. I've shown the picture to several students and friends, and they all also found it a bit odd. It is not representative of CUHK overall, but there is this strand of thinking in the university, and in Hong Kong generally, that perhaps harks back to colonial practice. Or to the Qin dynasty.

Snowed by Bureaucracy

By now everyone knows that Hong Kong claims that an error in the US provisional arrest warrant request led Hong Kong to let Edward Snowden leave the SAR. Hong Kong's Chief Executive C.Y. Leung insists that since Hong Kong follows the rule of law, it must also follow proper procedures (see WSJ blog story here). At the same time, Americans are incredulous; one senior US law enforcement official said, "Is this the best they got?"

There can be little doubt that politics entered into the decision-making process, and that Beijing had a hand in the decision.  Beijing's influence is not necessarily a violation of the one-country, two-systems formula. Beijing is, after all, responsible for security and diplomatic affairs for Hong Kong.

I think the excuse of improper paperwork seems a lot more believable in Hong Kong, where bureaucrats can be real sticklers for proper paperwork and procedures. I still remember my shock when we were required to produce our childrens' birth certificates to get a library card in the Shatin Public Library. I had brought our passports, but that was not good enough. Never mind that it is actually impossible to prove that the birth certificate actually belonged to my kids, while the passport has a photograph. Our university is also notoriously bureaucratic. Last year, I discovered that our Graduate School had been insisting that students spell "fulfillment" as "fulfilment" in the first page of the thesis, in statement that reads "A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment...." Students had learned not to argue with the clerk in charge, but to misspell the word in order to get the thesis accepted! The model had a typo, and the clerk just insisted that all theses have the same typo!

Thus, the notion that all the "i"s need to be dotted and "t"s crossed makes sense in Hong Kong. This must have seemed to be a perfect excuse to let Snowden leave. But it looks ridiculous to an American audience which knows that, if Beijing wanted something, it would have gotten done regardless of such bureaucratic details.

I still don't know if his name is Edward Joseph Snowden or Edward James Snowden.

Science and Racism, Again

The story of Jason Richwine and his racist PhD thesis is fascinating on many levels.  To summarize the facts, Richwine was a co-author of a Heritage Foundation study that estimated the costs of immigration reform to be $6.3 trillion, so high that even many Republicans dismissed it as incredible. In the controversy over this report, someone noted that Richwine's 2009 Harvard PhD thesis (in Public Policy) was a racist argument that immigrants should not be allowed into the US because of their low IQ scores. You can find a Slate story here, a The Nation view here, and a shrill defense of Richwine by Michelle Malkin in the National Review here.  After a few days of controversy, Richwine resigned from the Heritage Foundation.

You can also read his thesis; it is here. It is only 134 pages of text, and here is its Conclusion:

As the previous six chapters have discussed, today's immigrants are not as intelligent on average as white natives. The IQ difference between the two groups is large enough to have substantial negative effects on the economy and on American society. The deficit cannot be dismissed as meaningless or transient. It is transferred across generations--whether via genes, environment, or both--in a manner that we do not yet know how to prevent. Although this is a depressing conclusion, it does help us focus on a new opportunity. In trying to reverse the cognitive decline of immigrants, we could begin to seek out underprivileged people  who have the raw mental ability to achieve personal success, while still helping ourselves at the same time.

For anthropologists, it is stunning that in 2009, one could graduate with such a thesis. To just touch on some of the problems, the IQ test claims to measure "intelligence" but we know that this concept is culturally constructed (i.e. each culture has a culturally specific definition of what it means to be intelligent). For the IQ test, people familiar with test-taking will do better. We therefore cannot say that, say, Mexican peasants with little schooling who score lower on the IQ test are necessarily less intelligent that Indiana residents. "Race" itself is also a social, not biological, fact. "Hispanics" is especially problematic, as members of that group come from many continents and exhibit many different phenotypes.

Right wing apologists like Matlin claim that this is a witch hunt, and that Richwine has just been "crucified" because race and intelligence is a taboo topic in the US. Many in Asia might be tempted to agree. Many East Asians believe that Asians are biologically more intelligent than other "races," and believe that liberal Americans are just in denial. (Eugenics has no negative connotations in China.) But they are just not aware of all the research that shows the problems of measuring intelligence, and the little or no correlation between "race" and almost everything else. Franz Boas, one of the founders of American anthropology, became famous for his studies showing that the smaller brains of immigrants (which was the basis of "scientific" racism in the early 20th century) was only the product of poor diet in the Old Country; he showed children of immigrants had brain sizes comparable to those of other Americans. The reason racism appears to be taboo is because there is so much evidence against it. One has to question the intelligence of people who continue to peddle these ideas.

The real issue is how one could graduate with such a thesis from Harvard in 2009. This is especially  surprising because one of Richwine's committee members, Christopher Jencks, is considered a liberal/leftist. The fact that he approved the thesis is being cited by Rush Limbaugh as evidence that Richwine is being treated unfairly. When Jon Wiener of The Nation asked Jencks for a comment, he declined.

I have a theory of how this could happen. Over the years, I've noticed that some committee members in some universities do not really read the theses they are asked to read. At least, they do not read it as closely as they should. Richwine's thesis was not that long, only 158 pages in all (134 of text, plus appendices and references). And several lines that have been quoted, including the very end of the thesis quoted above, should have raised red flags. But if Jencks had not read the thesis before it was submitted, and if Richwine had a job lined up after graduation, then it would have been very difficult to insist on changes. Criticism at that point could even have been taken as a criticism of the thesis supervisor.

To avoid this problem, our Anthro department requires students show a near final draft to all committee members before the student submits the copy for the oral defense and for the external examiner. That gives teachers a chance to flag major problems. Furthermore, we would never allow a student to begin such an unsound and unscientific project. But in a place like Harvard, everyone is too busy with their own research. Most students at Harvard are very smart and can do a good thesis on their own (which is good, because at most elite schools you are on your own). But "Public Policy" is not the elite part of Harvard; it is on the applied side, in the Kennedy School, not one of the traditional disciplines like economics, political science, or sociology.  Students should think of this when they choose where to study.

It is a bit discouraging that racist ideas are so powerful and seem so naturally correct to many people. It is surprising that these ideas need to be repeatedly and constantly addressed, and that despite all the science and all the research and teaching that anthropologists and other scholars do on race, they live on. It looks like the AAA's Race Project will need to be extended for many more years.

Course Textbooks

Four years ago, students the introductory anthropology course I teach, ANTH1010 Humans and Culture, said that they would have preferred having a textbook rather than individual weekly readings. So I've used a textbook the past few times I've taught the course. The book I've used, by Haviland, is a bit "textbooky"; it now has four co-authors and looks like it was written by committee. It touches on all the main topics, but to fit it all in, it says very little about everything so seems to make little sense.

I've been looking for and alternative, so was happy to receive a review copy of Cultural Anthropology by Serena Nanda and Rchard L. Warms (11th edition). It seems more coherent, and to have a more consistent political economy theme. The publisher Cengage can make that book available in an International Edition here for HK$307 (about US$44).

I was shocked to see that the book sells on Amazon in the US for US$183.49. One of the comments on the Amazon site says:

This is a perfectly fine cultural anthropology textbook. It is well-organized and reasonably well-written

The problem with this book as that that it is extremely overpriced. The issue is that editions 9E, 8E, 7E,... are equally good. They publish a new edition with an inflated price ($150) every year and the differences in editions are negligible, The publisher and the authors (Nanda and Warms) should be ashamed of themselves.

 This is actually a good point. How can a textbook cost that much? Is anthropology really advancing that rapidly that we need new editions every 3 years?

The international edition has cheaper paper (both thinner and a bit more grey), but that does make it more portable. But even at HK$307, few students will buy the book. Last time I taught the course, I think only about 10 students in a class of 50 or so bought the book (the rest copy it from the library copy). 

I looked at using a different book, but it does not come in an "international edition" so the publisher would not even tell me what the price would be. I guess the sales rep was too embarrassed.  So perhaps publishers do have some shame after all.