Adopted Chinese Baby a Gold Medal Swimmer

Maggie MacNeil with her gold medal in the 100 butterfly

 

A few days ago China was in a tizzy when an adopted Chinese girl won Canada's first gold medal in the Tokyo 2020 Games in the women's 100 butterfly. She beat out China's Zhang Yufei by 0.05 seconds.

Maggie MacNeil is 21 years old and according to Chinese state media, she was abandoned by her biological parents in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province in February 2000. A year later she and her younger sister were adopted from a local orphanage by Susan MacNeil and Edward MacNeil and taken back to their hometown of London, Ontario.

MacNeil beat Zhang of China by 0.05 seconds

She began swimming in 2008 and became a sensation in the University of Michigan where she trains with Hong Kong's Siobhan Haughey.

When Chinese netizens found out about MacNeil's origins there was a torrent of comments online.

"Imagine had she not been brought up from the orphanage, or had she not been deserted by her biological parents, what would she be now? The adoption changed her life orbit completely as she was given such quality care and training."

Another said: "She might have dropped out of school to support a younger brother had she stayed in China."

China is now trying to encourage young families to have three children in a bid to boost the country's population numbers, but not many are interested in fulfilling this patriotic duty, particularly young career-minded women.

She began swimming at the age of eight

It is also an extreme response following decades of the one-child policy since 1980. As a result many families preferred to have boys than girls, resulting in many female babies being abandoned, much like MacNeil and her sister.

China launched its international adoption program in 1991 and it is estimated some 110,000 children from China has been adopted, mostly to the United States. According to the US Department of State, of the 82,456 children that Americans adopted from China between 1999 and 2020, 82.14 percent were females.

Some netizens felt that though MacNeil was born in China, she did not bring glory to the motherland.

"Her victory only proves how ethnicity does not matter in sports, as Asians clinched gold and silver in such an epic match," said one.

"She helms the citizenship of Canada, and all the credit should go to those who raised and trained her well in Canada," another said.

China's Zhang, MacNeil and Australian McKeon

"I feel ashamed to see media attention that MacNeil was born in China," a netizen said. "What is more worthy of being mentioned may be that we gave her up 20 years ago."

Ouch.

Nevertheless, MacNeil is taking the controversy in stride.

"I was born in China and I was adopted when I was really young, and that's as far as my Chinese heritage goes," she said in a post-race press conference. "I'm Canadian and I've always been Canadian, so that's just a very small part of my journey to where I am today. It's kind of irrelevant when it comes to swimming."

 

After Record 9,778 days in Jail, Innocent Man Released

Zhang (in red sash) reunited with his extended family

One wonders if the Chinese justice system will make changes in how it convicts defendants after an innocent man was finally released after spending almost 27 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. It is believed to be the longest wrongful imprisonment in China's history.

A court in the eastern province in Jiangxi found there was insufficient evidence to convict then 26-year-old Zhang Yuhuan of murdering two boys in 1995. He was handed a suspended death sentence in 1995 that was commuted life in prison after two years.

The court apologizes to Zhang

Zhang applied for a retrial in 2017 and it was granted last March and then finally ruled on last month.

"After the verdict, a representative of the Jiangxi High People's Court apologized to Zhang Yuhan on behalf of the court, and informed him he has the right to apply for state compensation," said the official summary of the case that was published on the court's website.

Before Zhang, the longest wrongful sentence was held by Liu Zhonglin, who was imprisoned at the age of 22 and released 25 years later. Liu was awarded 4.6 million yuan (US$670,000), about 500 yuan for each of the 9,217 days he was in prison.

Zhang, now 53, spent 9,778 days behind bars and is applying for 7 million yuan in compensation, according to his lawyer.

"I was taken as a young man and returned as a geezer, but I still have to thank the government for giving back my innocence," Zhang told local media on Wednesday.

But the emotional toll the almost 27-year sentence had on his family cannot be compensated with money; time is not something they can reverse.

Zhang with his ex-wife who helped his appeal

At the time of his imprisonment Zhang had a wife and two sons. She divorced him after being deprived of an income for six years and remarried, though she continued to help him with his appeal. Zhang came out of jail to meet his grandchildren, the oldest one is 12 years old.

"I've seen a lot of brothers and sisters, a lot of relatives, but I don't recognize many," Zhang said, adding his mother now 84, was the hardest to recognize.

Zhang says he was tortured by public security officers to produce a confession that contributed to his original conviction. However, the Jiangxi High People's Court rejected the application by Zhang and his lawyer to have such evidence disqualified, citing a lack of evidence behind the claims.

But now Zhang wants the relevant legal authorities to take action against those who allegedly pressured him to give a false confession.

What are the chances the authorities will actually track down those people from 27 years ago? Zhang may never get the justice he wants to see.

Zhang with his 84-year-old mother

China has one of the highest conviction rates in the world at 99.9 percent in 2016, while the conviction rate in the US federal court system is 93 percent.

In 2014 the Supreme People's Court abolished the use of conviction rates as a performance benchmark in the hopes that it would lead to fewer miscarriages of justice, and reduce the instances of torture and forced confessions.

But no one listened to Zhang, or his older brother Zhang Minqiang, who said he wrote over 1,000 letters of appeal throughout his brother's imprisonment.

How will Zhang ease back into normal life again? It will be a massive challenge for him, not only from a practical sense, but also psychologically having been through so much.

Hopefully his compensation request will be approved, but how do you even begin to compensate for 27 years of lost time?

China Wants Baby-Making Machines

China is trying to encourage couples to have more children... without success

Over 10 years ago when I was working in Beijing, a local colleague admitted his parents were severely fined for having another child -- him. They were anxious for a boy, and finally had one, but his parents were punished because they were senior Communist Party members.

He said their punishment was a very high fine and being socially looked down upon for not obeying the one-child policy that was implemented in 1979. In the end he managed to leave China to study an MBA at Duke University and now runs his family's company.

A financial penalty can make life difficult to make ends meet, but what about the horrific stories of women in rural areas who were forced to have abortions in their second and even third trimester because local officials wanted to keep the birth rates down in order to have good job performances?

A Chinese stamp showing a family with three piglets

The physical and psychological scars are indelible.

But now the Chinese government is doing away with the draconian policy and allowing parents to have not only two but more children. There are even propaganda posters of families of pigs, supposedly a metaphor that the more you procreate, the happier your family will be.

However, women aren't buying it.

Since the one-child policy, more young women are getting a higher education, focusing on careers and getting married later. There's also the rising costs of having a child; many can only afford to have one.

There is also the statistical problem of fewer women in the population thanks to the one-child policy, as families preferred boys of girls in almost 40 years.

According to He Yafu, a demographer and author of a book on the impact of China's population controls says the number of women between the ages of 20 and 39 is expected to drop by more than 39 million over the next decade, to 163 million from 202 million.

China needs more children for the workforce and pensions

"Without the introduction of measures to encourage fertility, the population of China will drop sharply in the future," he said.

This is a huge looming problem because the shrinking workforce won't be able to support the elderly not only in terms of manpower but also pensions.

As a result different provinces have their own incentives or punishments in order to get couples to have more children. For example, in Liaoning, one of the provinces with the lowest birthrates, is proposing several benefits for young families, including tax breaks, housing and education subsidies and longer maternity and paternity leaves, as well as investments in clinics and preschools.

Meanwhile in Jiangxi province, the government has reissued guidelines on when women can get abortions. There is a concern the rules will be strictly enforced, such as requiring a woman who is more than 14 weeks pregnant to obtain three signatures from medical personnel before an abortion.

Two other provinces have made it harder for couples to divorce, in the hopes that they will stick it out and have children.

The one-child policy from 1979 is over

Talk about not having control over one's body.

"Women cannot decide what happens to their own ovaries," one person complained on the microblogging platform Weibo, after Jiangxi announced its abortion guidelines in July.

The one-child policy has been slightly modified since it was instituted in 1979. Rural couples were allowed to try for another child if their first one was a girl, while ethnic minorities could have as many children as they liked. In 2013, if the husband and wife are only children, they were allowed to have more than one child. Then two years later, all couples could have two children.

This latest policy change didn't get the big baby bump the government was hoping for -- in fact the birthrate last year dropped, causing Beijing to worry.

On the one hand the government wants women to be educated and contribute to the work force, and on the other to pump out babies and look after aging parents. However, women get discriminated at work if they become pregnant and lose out on the career track if they don't go back to work after a period of time.

What about the men in all of this?

With a patriarchal government and society no wonder they think they can tell women what to do. But if they are having children, it's not to benefit the state.

PLA Veterans' Grumbles get Louder

The PLA celebrates its 91st anniversary tomorrow, but not everyone is happy

The People's Liberation Army or PLA has a lot of veterans, about 57 million people.

They are the latest group of people to grumble about their (lack of) benefits and aren't very happy.

The government is so worried they will divert attention from the 91st anniversary of the founding of China's military tomorrow that vice-minister Fang Yongxiang gave a press conference saying now was not the time to voice grievances about welfare rights.

Fang Yongxiang warns veterans not to protest tomorrow

"We oppose the use of extreme moves to petition, and the staging of mass gatherings," he said. "We hope every veteran can respect the law and not threaten the stability of our society because of an impulse.

"We hope that everyone can report their problems in a rational and peaceful way... and prevent radical words... and avoid being used by people with ulterior motives."

In recent months, former servicemen and women have staged numerous rallies calling for better welfare rights. Some protestors have claimed they were assaulted by groups of thugs hired by officials.

There was also a five-day rally in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province in June, where some protestors said the event ended when armed police were sent to disperse the crowd. A military source close to the provincial government said "more than 10 officials" involved in the rally were punished for their handling of the event.

He also said authorities in other parts of the country had increased their monitoring of veterans on the approach to the military's anniversary on Wednesday, August 1.

"Governments in other provinces and cities have been on high alert to prevent any similar protests from being organized," the person, who requested anonymity, said.

"To prevent any possible petitioning, household registration authorities have started calling [at people's homes] and updating the information they have about veterans, to make sure they know their whereabouts."

Veterans have held several protests in recent months

Sounds very familiar to how political dissidents are tracked...

Last week hundreds of people staged protests outside veterans' affairs offices in Shandong, Hebei and Jiangsu provinces. In Jinan, Shandong, police officers were dispatched to block exits at the city's railway station to prevent more people from joining the protest.

Gou Zhengguo is a former soldier who fought in the Vietnam war and now lives in Hunan province. He said many veterans were told they could gather to air their grievances, but not in public places or in large numbers -- probably meaning no larger than three people.

"Some local authorities think that the civil rights movement by veterans, who only want better retirement benefits, is becoming more complicated and being used [as a front] by hostile forces from overseas," he said.

Groan. That argument again?

Who are these "hostile forces" that always conveniently pop up to supposedly disrupt things?

Perhaps the government should buckle down and sort out the veterans' grievances?

Veterans protesting in Beijing last year

Zeng Zhiping, a military law professor at Nanchang Institute of Technology in Jiangxi province criticized the authorities for being more concerned with breaking up protests than finding solutions to the veterans' problems.

"It's such a stupid and short-sighted move to highlight how much social unrest the authorities have successfully tackled," he said.

"This kind of approach may be a credit on local officials' lists of political achievements, but it will stir up more conflict between veterans and local authorities, and sow the seed for more trouble."

Soldiers do not earn much money in the military, and when they leave, they haven't amassed much in terms of savings which leaves these veterans very unhappy after what they thought was an honourable job.

The Ministry of Veterans' Affairs opened in April, meant to tackle their grievances; at Tuesday's press conference, they announced measures to help 120,000 ex-servicemen and women find new jobs and improve the welfare packages of 10,000 retirees and disabled former soldiers.

These initiatives seem like a drop in the bucket to help the 57 million veterans who have served the country. Surely money used to quell protests would be better used to give veterans what they want?

Tainted Pork Raises Food Safety Questions

All lined up -- pork ready to be sold in markets and supermarkets

Earlier this month, we discovered there are still some loopholes in our quality control when it comes to inspecting pigs from China that come to Hong Kong to be slaughtered.

What typically happens is that when they pigs arrive in the city, they are tested to ensure they are safe for consumption, and once they have the green light, the animals are slaughtered and distributed, and then sold in wet markets and supermarkets.

However, this time, the pigs from Jiangxi province were tested, but before the results were confirmed, they were already slaughtered and the pork was distributed into the food chain.

Tainted pork earlier this month caused food safety fears

This caused not only a lot of fear regarding food safety in Hong Kong, but also led to financial losses for wholesalers and sellers who were mistakenly accused of selling tainted pork.

Today the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man apologized for the blunder, saying the tainted pork scandal was "entirely the government's fault", and police would investigate possible sabotage involved.

While farmers in the mainland are known to illegally use asthma medicine to enhance animal growth and leaness, this time around 300 pics were "drugged" with an unusually high level of illegal chemicals on their way to Hong Kong, rather than from the farms they came from.

"This might not be a simple food safety incident," Ko said. "It was unusual for farmers to use such a high level of food additives in pigs before the livestock were subjected to food safety tests.

"Even if they use illegal enhancers, they usually stop for a certain period before the pigs are sent to the slaughterhouse," he said.

Dr Ko Wing-man apologized for the tainted pork scandal

Wouldn't one be concerned to know farmers use these illegal enhancers anyway? Why doesn't Hong Kong refuse to accept any pigs that have been treated this way?

In fact why not encourage animal husbandry in Hong Kong again so we can ensure we are getting clean pork? Why are we depending on China for our supply? Why can't we have our own?

The Hong Kong government does little to encourage locals to take up farming, once a livelihood of previous generations. While it is admittedly hard work, there are some people who are keen to do this because of the benefits of eating organic, or at least food that is cleaner.

We have some organic farming happening, but on a vary small scale, and they aren't properly regulated. Chefs are keen to use local produce to lower their restaurants' carbon footprints, but these farms just don't produce enough volume.

There is potential there, so why can't the government support these farmers?

This dependence on China for our food and water is too much; and it's scary too. Ko's comment about farmers using illegal chemicals in our food is an everyday occurrence is shocking. And his lack of interest in encouraging locally-produced food is very telling.

Food Safety Fears... Again

A butcher selling pork in a wet market in Hong Kong

Yesterday Hong Kong's Food and Environment Hygiene Department found 319 pigs from the mainland with traces of Salbutamol and Clenbuterol -- drugs usually used to treat asthma, and artificially enhances animal growth and leaness.

However, the announcement was not made until 40 pigs had been sent to 27 retailers in the city, including two Wellcome stores and two Kai Bo Food Supermarkets.

There were a lot of questions why the authorities didn't stop the meat from being distributed, as they could not confirm if any more of the contaminated pork was on the market or if it had been consumed.

Pigs in Jiangxi province were found to be contaminated

Hui Wai-kin of the Pork Traders General Association of Hong Kong criticized the department for letting 40 of the tainted pigs to go through food production before safety results were known.

"Why would the pork be released to the market for sale before seeing the rest results on safety," he asked.

The spokesperson for the department could only say that 2,200kg of pork was confiscated from importers, and an additional 1,300kg turned in by wholesalers would be destroyed.

The contaminated pork came from Jiangxi province, which has now banned all livestock farms there from exporting pigs to Hong Kong. We get 20 per cent of our pork from Jiangxi, and from Guangdong and Henan provinces. One wonders if that pork is also safe to eat...

Pork is such a staple in Cantonese cuisine that it's hard for many families to go without it. They find it more flavourful than beef, and use it for everything from long-simmering soups to stir-fries, dumplings, roasted, and in bun fillings for dim sum.

Many vegetables sold in Hong Kong are from China

This is not the first time Hong Kong has had to deal with contaminated food from China. It again raises the issue of food security that the authorities don't seem to care about, as we also get 80 percent of our water from across the border too, and for very cheap, but is it safe?

Cheap is not a vote of confidence for Hong Kong people, some of whom have decided to reduce their meat intake, or only eat meat from overseas, go completely vegetarian or even vegan.

Surely the Hong Kong government is acutely aware of its residents' feelings towards food imports from China. Taking the necessary precautions to alert people about contaminated food should be its number one priority and stopping it from getting into the food distribution system.

A local doctor has warned that eating large amounts of tainted pork could result in heart failure for those with heart disease.

Do we want to know this after the contaminated pork entered our food distribution system? And if you eat pork almost daily, does this mean the toxins from the pork stay in our bodies for a long period of time? No one is telling the answer.

All the more reason to eat less meat, though vegetables from the mainland have been sprayed excessively with fertilizer and pesticides too... What can we eat?