August 23, 2007

• The Importance of Social Security

  When you go to a First World country, a developing country and an under-developed country, you will definitely feel the difference of the societies. The social security of China has not been established. The way of living in a Mainland city is more difficult than that in Hong Kong.

  When I was in Shanghai, I could feel that I had to be always ready to fight for what I deserved. Sandra and I paid a monthly fee of RMB1300.00 for the air-conditioning in the apartment. (The cost for the living would be quite high. All kinds of energy including electricity, gas and hot water were deducted in a pre-paid IC card. 5 days of living costed us more than RMB600.00. Therefore, if we did not pay the monthly fee of air-conditioning separately, we had to pay more than RMB4000.00 a month. Pretty scary! Much more expensive than in Hong Kong.) Well, the remaining energy cost would be around RMB150.00 per month. This kind of payment was a good bargain.

  One day, after I had my lunch and went back to the apartment, the central air-conditioning could not be switched on. I went to the estate management office and reported to them the situation. Those ladies asked if I had used up the value in the pre-paid IC card. Ridiculous! We had had more than RMB600.00 in the card. They then checked the computer and replied that the record in the computer had not been renewed and they apologised because they said this was the problem of the computer. They further explained that it was because of this COMPUTER ERROR that the sum in the pre-paid card started to be deducted and the sum was now zero in the card. Really? GIGO! Garbage in, garbage out. It should be the people who renewed the computer record. I wondered if this would happen in Hong Kong or any well-developed cities in the world. If I had not been in Shanghai, Sandra would have come back after work and found the problem but she would not have any chance to report to the management office until next morning. She would then have to face a night of unbearable heat and humidity with no gas at all. On the next day, she would have to go to the management office and apply for a half-day-off.

  This is a typical encounter that proves the lack of social security in Mainland China. No matter how polite those ladies were, you would have no faith in other people. A person has to defend himself or herself at all times and fight for what he/she deserves because he/she cannot trust other people. The fabric of interpersonal trust and social security has not been woven yet. This is closely related to how civilised and modernised a society is. No matter how fast Mainland China has been growing economically, it is still far behind in this dimension of development. As you can see, if you would like to be cured in a decent way, you have to pay more in the hospital. If you would like to enrol your child in a good school, you have to pay more to the school. China is a socialist country, so called. But the education system and the medical system are totally capitalistic or even utilitarian. This is ironic to certain extent. Without the basic respect and trust, everyone lacks a sense of security. As a large country with the largest population and the fastest economic growth rate, I really think that it is time we, Chinese, should establish some kind of core values in our society. Otherwise, we will only become the country with largest number of complaints on export of second-rated commodities and the fastest rotten name.

  • 9:54 am
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