I am also in China. By the way, I just sent an email to my alternate gmail address. It went through just fine.
That being said, google has been throttled for months. I am able to search using google HK; but, if I try to follow a search result I cannot. I just times out. This has more to do with trying to push users to the Chinese brand product competitor, Biadu, than with censorship.
What to website fails to capture is economic censorship. This is the restricting of bandwidth in order to push users to domestic services. The target website is still accessible; but, it works poorly. This has the effect of pushing users to domestically owned competitors.
An example would be Google. While Google is accessible much of the time, and note that I did not say all of the time, following links from Google is often impossible. This has the effect of pushing users to Baidu, an underdeveloped Google clone that is popular, and owned in, China.
Another example is Photobucket. While the website in the article claims it is no censored, it is not usable. Links between pages do not work so it is impossible to sign in and pictures can only be accessed by typing in their exact URL. While it will return a ping, it is not being given enough bandwidth to function properly. The restrictions on social websites, such as this, are not purely political. They are also driven by an attempt to push all traffic to the domestically owned (and really poor in usability) q-zone.
The articles website fails to capture the entire problem and fails to understand that the problem is not just politics. It is, as is seen so often elsewhere too, business colluding with government.
The biggest problems that I see are that the electronic voting, as it is currently done, is not anonymous and takes significantly more manpower to process.
I filled out my absentee forms, scanned them (really I took a picture of them with my digital camera), and emailed them to the county clerk. She then sent me an email stating that they have been received and, when printed, were legible.
It worked well; but, as stated, if many people were to do this the system would choke. It would also not work well for people who are afraid of having others see their ballot choices.
It is not available in P.R. China through any authorized channel. Even if it were, it would be edited to nothing. The real odd thing to me is that it has recently been featured in the national student newspaper (21'st Century) in a two page spread . The article was mostly an attempt to explain the program and to help students understand the names.
What I found interesting was that there was a full two page article on a program that is not even officially available and contains a significant amount of material that would be censored even if it were available. All that being said, it is not popular with the Chinese students that I know. The plot is too complicated for the male students and it is too violent, and overtly sexual, for the female students. However, it seems to be popular with many of the westerners here; further, considering that the article was written, I expect it is popular with some Chinese, just not here.
You don't entirely get it, acknowledging the attacks feeds into the official line that China is always under attack.
China is an extremely nationalistic country that continually repeats to its people "China is a very poor country that is under constant attack and must continually allow the Government to provide for its defense at any cost." Thus, any opposition to the Government is seen as actions against The Nation in the face of the enemy.
B) Too many excuses. You set homework online or through dedicated software and the pupils come back with 1001 excuses - "broadband wasn't working", "I couldn't download it", "it was in the wrong format", "printer was out of paper", "I've got it on memory stick and it still needs printing" All easily check-able and solve-able individually but not if you have 30 students. Give a child a piece of paper with homework on it, and if they lose it it's their fault (they could have come and collected a new sheet before the lesson), and if its not done it's their fault. Much much simpler.
As a teacher this is the one I run into.
At my school the students have a dedicated chat room for each class. live chats can be conducted, messages can be posted and files can be posted (there are some other features, like group voice chat too). Yet, when I post an assignment or a class instruction (unless it is a "class canceled" posting) about half of the students say they didn't see it.
If I want them to do something, about the only thing that really works is to hand them a piece of paper and read the paper to them. This isn't because they can not read, it is about eliminating excuses.
I suppose one could buy the game and then pirate it simultaneously..
This is precisely what will happen in my house. My wife will buy it because she morally equates the piracy with stealing. Then she will run into some issue, like wanting to play when the internet connection is down; or, God only knows what.
At that point she will tell me to make it work. I will tell her that to make it work in need to download a pirated version. She will give some vague answer that translates to, "I don't what to hear how you do it, I only want to hear that it is working!"
Actually, I am in P.R. China; so, if I saw someone running around with what looked like a rifle, and he wasn't obviously police or security, I would assume that he was playing airsoft.
I just checked. It still does not work. Part of the problem is that Google appears to only have a small allocation in P.R. China. As such most attempts to use it time out.
Back to the point, I am still unable to access it.
Precisely my problem too. The first thing to decide is which Vulnerability bothers me the most. The first thing to realize is that this is China; as such, privacy is not a real concept and is definitely not thought of in a positive sense.
My choices are to mail my ballot, understanding that it is not possible to mail a sealed envelope. The postal people will seal the envelop after they have examined it and its contents. The other option is to fax the ballot. If it is faxed, it must be faxed from the police station (Public Security Bureau), Immigration division. They will also need a copy of my ballot to place in my permanent file.
So, no matter what, privacy is out of the question. The next issue is in the mechanics of voting. I have been here several years and I have never gotten my election materials more than two days before the end of the voting period. So, rather obviously, I have not voted. However, that is how I found out about the rules regarding faxing my ballot (I didn't realize that I needed file copies before going to PSB to fax my ballot and there wasn't enough time to go to a copy place to get copies before PSB closed).
As an experiment, my County Clerk once sent me a post card just to see how long it would take to get it to me. I got the post card over four months after it had originally been postmarked.
Much of the world is not like The West. In some places it is viewed with suspicion. It is also viewed more as a political activity than as a civic activity.
What is interesting to me, with the continual WTO talk, is that imports are taxed heavily in China. The item does not even need to be an imported product, it only needs to be an imported brand.
This means that even if the product is made entirely in China, if the brand is significantly foreign owned then the item is taxed at a rate that is equal to the amount that is projected to leave China due to the purchase. Tax code is actually a bit more complicated than this; but that is basically how it works.
This allows the Chinese branded competitors to the American and German brands to establish their production process, allowing them to compete internationally. To the Chinese consumer the result is higher prices.
Part of the reason for the higher prices is that the Chinese manufacturer does not need to offer the item at a lower price, or even the the same price as the, Chinese made, item is sold for in the US and EU.Like I have mentioned here before, it is cheaper for me to have friends in America purchase items like smart-phones and computer and mail them to me in China than to purchase the item in China. Even most household goods, other than the most basic items manufactured by "not for export" companies, are more expensive in China.
Right now China is playing both sides, they are calling to the WTO when anyone considering responding to China's practices and the results of those practices. At the same time China is crying, "oh, pity poor China," when anyone considers demanding that China obey the same rules that it demands that others abide by.
And the thing that surprises the Chinese is how heavily censored the US search engines are. I had a student come over to my apartment, she wanted to see the "sample" speeches for a speech competition she had entered. For all intents and purposes, we could find none in Google, we had to go to Biadu.
The same for many books, reference articles, and educational materials; we had to go to the Chinese search engines to find a Harvard Business Review article for a class exercise.
Now for the weird one, much of the information about the riots and protests in China is only available in China. It seems that no one outside of China wants to cover Chinese "bad news" other than the economic issues.
Living in China and using Chinese search engines, what I am amazed by is how hard it is to fond relevant information using the US search engines, in comparison to the Chinese ones.
I live in China, the problem is not that the technicians do not know how to do this (well many are shockingly incompetent; if I described my desktop XP install, here in my office, you would blanch); the problem is that the decisions are not made by the people doing the work. The decisions about what needs to be done are made by leaders.
The leaders do not need to hear ideas from below, if the people below had any worthy ideas then they would be leaders. They give orders and the orders are acted on; or not depending on if the capacity to follow the order is present. What they do not do is listen. As such, they do not allow actions that the "workers" see as needed. Further, if an order is given and the capacity is not present, the work just doesn't get done. Then, at the next meeting they demand that it get done in a more forceful manner; but, they still do not listen to why it wasn't done.
The typical result is that what needs to be done is eventually accomplished; but, in an outlandishly inefficient manner because the workers are using makeshift tool and methods.
Back to the problem, I suspect that many see the problem; however, until a "leader" sees the problem then no orders will be given and nothing will be done.
you don't know too many philosophy, sociology, english, music or arts majors do you?
Just as a comment, I have an MBA and still have never been outside of the 150% bracket in my life. Potential employers see a series of low pay job and resist offering a "good" job. The attitude is clearly that if no one else has seen me worthy of a job that is not indexed to the minimum wage, why should they?
It is the classic "born in poverty" case. Yes, many manage to escape the trap and we all hear thier stories. They are exceptional. To apply that very word, they are the exception.
If you are trying to amortize the sunk costs (money spent, on a project, that can never be recovered); such as, R&D, tooling, early marketing, then it is likely that they are loosing money at that price point. However, it you just look at the marginal cost cost of production, distribution, and what has become very low power marketing, then they may be seeing a positive cash flow on each unit sold.
I am using my iPhone with a China Mobile SIM and it is extremely slow. All the apps and launching runs very slow when I have the China Mobile SIM in it.
I am hoping that, whatever they do, it will fix this issue and that it will allow me to update my OS without loosing my ability to connect to China Mobile.
I have lived in P.R. China since 2006 and I do not recall ever coming across this browser on anyone's machines or in any internet cafes. I am not saying that no one uses it. However, the only browser I ever see anyone using is the Chinese language version of IE.
I really was expecting some weird porn site when I clicked on it; however, I was willing to try and see if yous was a legitimate question. For all following, it is a legitimate site.
Back to your question, Yes, the site loads fine. However, you are relying on youtube for your video and youtube is blocked in China. So, where you have video, I get big white blocks that say
This webpage is not available The webpage at http://www.youtube.com/embed/qPuH3DqP5tQ?rel=0&hd=1 might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address. Here are some suggestions: Reload this web page later. Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): The connection was reset.
This is the standard message I get in any youtube embed.
As far as why you are not getting many hits, Your website really isn't that interesting. It is not clear what you are selling. If it is a "plain old religious website" the message is not clear. If you are selling a product, that is also not very clear. Possibly the videos make a presentation. However, as it stands, thee is a good reason you do not get many hits.
Sorry to bust your bubble; but, Google works fine too. It does default to a Chinese version; but, there is a redirect link on the page to go to the English version.
What doesn't work, as some have alluded to, is youtube and facebook. Yes, there are workarounds; but, I haven't gotten any of the free workarounds to work.
I am in P.R. China and I have never had trouble accessing Slashdot. In fact, it is so reliable that it is the site I typically check if I want to see if the internet connection is working.
China has a very large Muslim population. Every town I have lived in has had at lest one, and often several mosques. China includes Islam prominently when identifying its nations religions.
"Chinese citizens enjoy full religious freedom. China is not only a large country in terms of population, it is also a major country in terms of religion, with schools of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and others, and a total of 100 million religious adherents among a national population of 1.2 billion." http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zt/zjxy/t36496.htm
I have done very little programming (other than excel) since my college classes in Pascal. based on the reviews here, and the fact that the book is available online for free, I decided to give this book a try.
I have gotten to this, "Try more format characters. %r is a very useful one. It's like saying "print this no matter what". Search online for all of the Python format characters."
String and Unicode objects have one unique built-in operation: the % operator (modulo). This is also known as the string formatting or interpolation operator. Given format % values (where format is a string or Unicode object), % conversion specifications in format are replaced with zero or more elements of values. The effect is similar to the using sprintf() in the C language. If format is a Unicode object, or if any of the objects being converted using the %s conversion are Unicode objects, the result will also be a Unicode object.
If format requires a single argument, values may be a single non-tuple object. [4] Otherwise, values must be a tuple with exactly the number of items specified by the format string, or a single mapping object (for example, a dictionary).
A conversion specifier contains two or more characters and has the following components, which must occur in this order:
The '%' character, which marks the start of the specifier. Mapping key (optional), consisting of a parenthesised sequence of characters (for example, (somename)). Conversion flags (optional), which affect the result of some conversion types. Minimum field width (optional). If specified as an '*' (asterisk), the actual width is read from the next element of the tuple in values, and the object to convert comes after the minimum field width and optional precision. Precision (optional), given as a '.' (dot) followed by the precision. If specified as '*' (an asterisk), the actual width is read from the next element of the tuple in values, and the value to convert comes after the precision. Length modifier (optional). Conversion type. When the right argument is a dictionary (or other mapping type), then the formats in the string must include a parenthesised mapping key into that dictionary inserted immediately after the '%' character. The mapping key selects the value to be formatted from the mapping.
Just to ask, do you really think this means much to a person who has not been involved in programming for several years?
This book is both too basic, with the instructions of "just type what you see," and too advanced, with an assumption that the reader already knows about the subject and needs no explanation beyond "go look it up somewhere"
Opensorce is pretty much a dead concept in China already. They understand copying; but, why should they give credit to another person.
Further, sharing is not a Chinese value. Why should they make it easier for another person to compete with them?
Really, I work at a university in China. they are aware of the Western Linux and Opensource thing. They just have no interest in it. They do not understand the point of it; to them, it is simply based on an alien value system.
Just a "what he said" post. I can confirm that the Chinese hospitals are cash in advance. I have waited in those lines. I have also seen some pretty messed up (as in blood leaking through makeshift bandages) waiting in line to pay cash in advance at the hospitals.
There are many things that China does well; however, one of the the most glaring things about China is that it is such an example of capitalism run completely amuck.
Slashdot Mirror
I am also in China. By the way, I just sent an email to my alternate gmail address. It went through just fine.
That being said, google has been throttled for months. I am able to search using google HK; but, if I try to follow a search result I cannot. I just times out. This has more to do with trying to push users to the Chinese brand product competitor, Biadu, than with censorship.
What to website fails to capture is economic censorship. This is the restricting of bandwidth in order to push users to domestic services. The target website is still accessible; but, it works poorly. This has the effect of pushing users to domestically owned competitors.
An example would be Google. While Google is accessible much of the time, and note that I did not say all of the time, following links from Google is often impossible. This has the effect of pushing users to Baidu, an underdeveloped Google clone that is popular, and owned in, China.
Another example is Photobucket. While the website in the article claims it is no censored, it is not usable. Links between pages do not work so it is impossible to sign in and pictures can only be accessed by typing in their exact URL. While it will return a ping, it is not being given enough bandwidth to function properly. The restrictions on social websites, such as this, are not purely political. They are also driven by an attempt to push all traffic to the domestically owned (and really poor in usability) q-zone.
The articles website fails to capture the entire problem and fails to understand that the problem is not just politics. It is, as is seen so often elsewhere too, business colluding with government.
The biggest problems that I see are that the electronic voting, as it is currently done, is not anonymous and takes significantly more manpower to process.
I filled out my absentee forms, scanned them (really I took a picture of them with my digital camera), and emailed them to the county clerk. She then sent me an email stating that they have been received and, when printed, were legible.
It worked well; but, as stated, if many people were to do this the system would choke. It would also not work well for people who are afraid of having others see their ballot choices.
It is not available in P.R. China through any authorized channel. Even if it were, it would be edited to nothing. The real odd thing to me is that it has recently been featured in the national student newspaper (21'st Century) in a two page spread . The article was mostly an attempt to explain the program and to help students understand the names.
What I found interesting was that there was a full two page article on a program that is not even officially available and contains a significant amount of material that would be censored even if it were available. All that being said, it is not popular with the Chinese students that I know. The plot is too complicated for the male students and it is too violent, and overtly sexual, for the female students. However, it seems to be popular with many of the westerners here; further, considering that the article was written, I expect it is popular with some Chinese, just not here.
Its right above the product description. [quote]Firearms may only be shipped to a licensed dealer (FFL Holder).[/quote]
You don't entirely get it, acknowledging the attacks feeds into the official line that China is always under attack.
China is an extremely nationalistic country that continually repeats to its people "China is a very poor country that is under constant attack and must continually allow the Government to provide for its defense at any cost." Thus, any opposition to the Government is seen as actions against The Nation in the face of the enemy.
B) Too many excuses. You set homework online or through dedicated software and the pupils come back with 1001 excuses - "broadband wasn't working", "I couldn't download it", "it was in the wrong format", "printer was out of paper", "I've got it on memory stick and it still needs printing" All easily check-able and solve-able individually but not if you have 30 students. Give a child a piece of paper with homework on it, and if they lose it it's their fault (they could have come and collected a new sheet before the lesson), and if its not done it's their fault. Much much simpler.
As a teacher this is the one I run into.
At my school the students have a dedicated chat room for each class. live chats can be conducted, messages can be posted and files can be posted (there are some other features, like group voice chat too). Yet, when I post an assignment or a class instruction (unless it is a "class canceled" posting) about half of the students say they didn't see it.
If I want them to do something, about the only thing that really works is to hand them a piece of paper and read the paper to them. This isn't because they can not read, it is about eliminating excuses.
I suppose one could buy the game and then pirate it simultaneously. .
This is precisely what will happen in my house. My wife will buy it because she morally equates the piracy with stealing. Then she will run into some issue, like wanting to play when the internet connection is down; or, God only knows what.
At that point she will tell me to make it work. I will tell her that to make it work in need to download a pirated version.
She will give some vague answer that translates to, "I don't what to hear how you do it, I only want to hear that it is working!"
This has happened before, it will happen again.
Actually, I am in P.R. China; so, if I saw someone running around with what looked like a rifle, and he wasn't obviously police or security, I would assume that he was playing airsoft.
I just checked. It still does not work. Part of the problem is that Google appears to only have a small allocation in P.R. China. As such most attempts to use it time out.
Back to the point, I am still unable to access it.
Precisely my problem too. The first thing to decide is which Vulnerability bothers me the most. The first thing to realize is that this is China; as such, privacy is not a real concept and is definitely not thought of in a positive sense.
My choices are to mail my ballot, understanding that it is not possible to mail a sealed envelope. The postal people will seal the envelop after they have examined it and its contents. The other option is to fax the ballot. If it is faxed, it must be faxed from the police station (Public Security Bureau), Immigration division. They will also need a copy of my ballot to place in my permanent file.
So, no matter what, privacy is out of the question. The next issue is in the mechanics of voting. I have been here several years and I have never gotten my election materials more than two days before the end of the voting period. So, rather obviously, I have not voted. However, that is how I found out about the rules regarding faxing my ballot (I didn't realize that I needed file copies before going to PSB to fax my ballot and there wasn't enough time to go to a copy place to get copies before PSB closed).
As an experiment, my County Clerk once sent me a post card just to see how long it would take to get it to me. I got the post card over four months after it had originally been postmarked.
Much of the world is not like The West. In some places it is viewed with suspicion. It is also viewed more as a political activity than as a civic activity.
What is interesting to me, with the continual WTO talk, is that imports are taxed heavily in China. The item does not even need to be an imported product, it only needs to be an imported brand.
This means that even if the product is made entirely in China, if the brand is significantly foreign owned then the item is taxed at a rate that is equal to the amount that is projected to leave China due to the purchase. Tax code is actually a bit more complicated than this; but that is basically how it works.
This allows the Chinese branded competitors to the American and German brands to establish their production process, allowing them to compete internationally. To the Chinese consumer the result is higher prices.
Part of the reason for the higher prices is that the Chinese manufacturer does not need to offer the item at a lower price, or even the the same price as the, Chinese made, item is sold for in the US and EU.Like I have mentioned here before, it is cheaper for me to have friends in America purchase items like smart-phones and computer and mail them to me in China than to purchase the item in China. Even most household goods, other than the most basic items manufactured by "not for export" companies, are more expensive in China.
Right now China is playing both sides, they are calling to the WTO when anyone considering responding to China's practices and the results of those practices. At the same time China is crying, "oh, pity poor China," when anyone considers demanding that China obey the same rules that it demands that others abide by.
And the thing that surprises the Chinese is how heavily censored the US search engines are. I had a student come over to my apartment, she wanted to see the "sample" speeches for a speech competition she had entered. For all intents and purposes, we could find none in Google, we had to go to Biadu.
The same for many books, reference articles, and educational materials; we had to go to the Chinese search engines to find a Harvard Business Review article for a class exercise.
Now for the weird one, much of the information about the riots and protests in China is only available in China. It seems that no one outside of China wants to cover Chinese "bad news" other than the economic issues.
Living in China and using Chinese search engines, what I am amazed by is how hard it is to fond relevant information using the US search engines, in comparison to the Chinese ones.
I live in China, the problem is not that the technicians do not know how to do this (well many are shockingly incompetent; if I described my desktop XP install, here in my office, you would blanch); the problem is that the decisions are not made by the people doing the work. The decisions about what needs to be done are made by leaders.
The leaders do not need to hear ideas from below, if the people below had any worthy ideas then they would be leaders. They give orders and the orders are acted on; or not depending on if the capacity to follow the order is present. What they do not do is listen. As such, they do not allow actions that the "workers" see as needed. Further, if an order is given and the capacity is not present, the work just doesn't get done. Then, at the next meeting they demand that it get done in a more forceful manner; but, they still do not listen to why it wasn't done.
The typical result is that what needs to be done is eventually accomplished; but, in an outlandishly inefficient manner because the workers are using makeshift tool and methods.
Back to the problem, I suspect that many see the problem; however, until a "leader" sees the problem then no orders will be given and nothing will be done.
you don't know too many philosophy, sociology, english, music or arts majors do you?
Just as a comment, I have an MBA and still have never been outside of the 150% bracket in my life. Potential employers see a series of low pay job and resist offering a "good" job. The attitude is clearly that if no one else has seen me worthy of a job that is not indexed to the minimum wage, why should they?
It is the classic "born in poverty" case. Yes, many manage to escape the trap and we all hear thier stories. They are exceptional. To apply that very word, they are the exception.
It depends on how you define loss.
If you are trying to amortize the sunk costs (money spent, on a project, that can never be recovered); such as, R&D, tooling, early marketing, then it is likely that they are loosing money at that price point. However, it you just look at the marginal cost cost of production, distribution, and what has become very low power marketing, then they may be seeing a positive cash flow on each unit sold.
It really depends on how you define loss.
I am using my iPhone with a China Mobile SIM and it is extremely slow. All the apps and launching runs very slow when I have the China Mobile SIM in it.
I am hoping that, whatever they do, it will fix this issue and that it will allow me to update my OS without loosing my ability to connect to China Mobile.
I have lived in P.R. China since 2006 and I do not recall ever coming across this browser on anyone's machines or in any internet cafes. I am not saying that no one uses it. However, the only browser I ever see anyone using is the Chinese language version of IE.
I really was expecting some weird porn site when I clicked on it; however, I was willing to try and see if yous was a legitimate question. For all following, it is a legitimate site.
Back to your question, Yes, the site loads fine. However, you are relying on youtube for your video and youtube is blocked in China. So, where you have video, I get big white blocks that say
This webpage is not available
The webpage at http://www.youtube.com/embed/qPuH3DqP5tQ?rel=0&hd=1 might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this web page later.
Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): The connection was reset.
This is the standard message I get in any youtube embed.
As far as why you are not getting many hits, Your website really isn't that interesting. It is not clear what you are selling. If it is a "plain old religious website" the message is not clear. If you are selling a product, that is also not very clear. Possibly the videos make a presentation. However, as it stands, thee is a good reason you do not get many hits.
Sorry to bust your bubble; but, Google works fine too. It does default to a Chinese version; but, there is a redirect link on the page to go to the English version.
What doesn't work, as some have alluded to, is youtube and facebook. Yes, there are workarounds; but, I haven't gotten any of the free workarounds to work.
I am in P.R. China and I have never had trouble accessing Slashdot. In fact, it is so reliable that it is the site I typically check if I want to see if the internet connection is working.
China has a very large Muslim population. Every town I have lived in has had at lest one, and often several mosques. China includes Islam prominently when identifying its nations religions.
"Chinese citizens enjoy full religious freedom. China is not only a large country in terms of population, it is also a major country in terms of religion, with schools of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and others, and a total of 100 million religious adherents among a national population of 1.2 billion." http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zt/zjxy/t36496.htm
I have done very little programming (other than excel) since my college classes in Pascal. based on the reviews here, and the fact that the book is available online for free, I decided to give this book a try.
I have gotten to this, "Try more format characters. %r is a very useful one. It's like saying "print this no matter what". Search online for all of the Python format characters."
Well, I searched online. I went to http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html and found this
Just to ask, do you really think this means much to a person who has not been involved in programming for several years?
This book is both too basic, with the instructions of "just type what you see," and too advanced, with an assumption that the reader already knows about the subject and needs no explanation beyond "go look it up somewhere"
Opensorce is pretty much a dead concept in China already. They understand copying; but, why should they give credit to another person.
Further, sharing is not a Chinese value. Why should they make it easier for another person to compete with them?
Really, I work at a university in China. they are aware of the Western Linux and Opensource thing. They just have no interest in it. They do not understand the point of it; to them, it is simply based on an alien value system.
Just a "what he said" post. I can confirm that the Chinese hospitals are cash in advance. I have waited in those lines. I have also seen some pretty messed up (as in blood leaking through makeshift bandages) waiting in line to pay cash in advance at the hospitals.
There are many things that China does well; however, one of the the most glaring things about China is that it is such an example of capitalism run completely amuck.