[Radix] Any suggestions re Sichuan earthquake?

[bwisner at igc.org]

I'd like to support what George says.  I had a similar experience to his.  While he spoke in China about food safety, I had an opportunity to address school safety in a meeting in November in Sichuan Province.  I took a very similar approach to the one that George describes, and I also received a positive response.  I'd only take issue with the phrase George uses, "... of course nothing was done with these ideas."  I think one needs to be patient and supportive of people in China who are working in a very complex environment to make these kinds of progressive changes.  As regards school safety I definitely see improvement and am optimistic.

The most important part of George's message of possible help to your preparation for the meeting in Belgium, Terry, would be not to make a broad brush criticism of "lack of democracy" or "call for liberalization", but to focus on Sichuan and the earthquake.  The issues are so complex that it would simply not be academically rigorous to "lump" SARS, school safety, AIDS, Amur River toxic spill together.

-----Original Message-----
>From: George Kent <kent at hawaii.edu>
>Sent: Jan 8, 2009 7:22 PM
>To: T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk
>Cc: radix at ecie.org
>Subject: Re: [Radix] Any suggestions re Sichuan earthquake?
>
>Terry, calling for liberalization in broad terms might be  
>counterproductive. I'd go for an approach that has the government set  
>out good standards for school buildings, after appropriate  
>consultations with experts, and then state that people have a right to  
>have their schools meet these standards. Then provide ordinary people  
>with the means for assessing the quality of their schools on at least  
>some of the standards, and create some institutionalized mechanisms  
>through which they can complain if they feel the standards are not met.
>
>You could also offer to work with the government in developing this  
>rights-based system of standards and accountability.
>
>I used this approach in a talk I gave in China about food safety. It  
>seemed to get a reasonably good reception--but of course nothing was  
>done with the ideas.
>
>I think we discussed these ideas on this list a couple of years ago.
>
>Aloha, George
>
>
>
>On Jan 8, 2009, at 1:38 PM, T.G.Cannon at greenwich.ac.uk wrote:
>
>>  To that end, I propose to argue that the Chinese government should  
>> actually support freedom of thought and information, and the right  
>> to protest, because when citizens are free to do that (e.g against  
>> local corruption) then these human rights would in fact be  
>> supporting the governments capacity to protect its citizens. Does  
>> that work?
>>
>> If there is time I will point out that the idea that states /  
>> governments should protect their citizens is really a product of the  
>> enlightenment and democracy, and that previously there was no  
>> requirement for a ruling class or elite to even pretend that it was  
>> doing anything other than serve itself.
>
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