Tzu Chi Foundation (慈济, CiJi) often travel (via hired chartered buses) to rural outskirts 50-150km (or farther) from Kunming to provide supplies & assistance to those in need.
This Kunming-based charity organization may welcome foreign English teachers for their frequent missions. Not sure. You'll have to touch base with the Tzu Chi volunteer leaders (info end of post).
Many of the members are Buddhists, but you don't have to be one to join. Compassion & time, all that are required. Tzu Chi has world-wide reach. Their members consist of retired or active professionals with day jobs who find free time to help the impoverished, the sick, the foster children, or the elders.
For reference, here's an old English article published by their foundation, titled "Tzu Chi Delivers Winter Aid to Thousands Across China - Yunnan:"
Then POTUS Bill Clinton couldn’t dissuade the caning of American graffiti kid in Singapore. Granted punishment strokes were reduced as a show of diplomatic goodwill.
The most infamous among Singapore's laws was forbidding gum chewing. If memory serves right, the gum ban was the city-state's response to a bygone social protest of sticking gum all over the transit system.
That said, officers eschewed enforcement of gum chewing. Trivial restrictions are regularly overlooked to avoid reigniting social unrest. Outside Orchard Road, locals chew gums (smuggled from Malaysian border) or spit regardless. After all, they're just gum, not guns.
Department store bathroom smokers will annoyingly persist. Cameras won't be installed in WCs anytime soon...
but outside smokey water closets, the advent of A.I. surveillance w/ automatic social credit deductions may pick up the slack in the cat & mouse enforcement game.
Newly developed machine learning cameras will be upgraded with capabilities of identifying civilians by their walking gait and body shape in the event faces are concealed from view. Detection accuracy will be in question, but incrementally fine-tuned. That’s the neural network power of machine learning.
This harks back to the discussion from another thread on why vehicles have begun yielding to pedestrians at intersections.
Rules are abided when laws are strictly and automatically enforced. Civility ensues when drivers receive instant text messages of ticket penalties as caught by automated traffic cameras. Just don't read the messages while driving.
---------
In regards to popular online gaming, which Chinese youths are seemingly addicted to these days. It’s my understanding Tencent Holdings Limited (parent of WeChat/QQ) monopolizes the gaming industry in China.
Piggyback off the omnipresence of smartphones, Tencent’s multiplayer online battles such as role-playing Honour of Kings harbor 200 million monthly subscribers. This and other popular blockchain esports require players to login and verify age in order to connect with the vast online community of gamers in real-time. These aren’t the standalone, offline games one would download from torrent magnets.
Like Alipay/Wepay cashless payment services @tiger mentioned, players’ personal records and transaction history are logged. Gaming accounts with mandatory age verification are linked to police database. So for the vast majority, they can and will be traced.
Tencent will readily hand over jurisdiction of user profiles if called upon from higher power. Minors or adolescents who play nonstop would be automatically logged off from the games. The "nanny" eyes of T.J. Eckleburg will be watching your child.
For those heading northwest next month, you're in luck!
The new high speed rail section from Dali to Lijiang is scheduled to run in December. The 161 km public maiden voyage will only take 50 minutes. Hence, approximately 3 hours from Kunming to Lijiang (vice versa) via the high speed rail.
which begs the question. When is surveillance too much?
Like Ray Bradbury, dystopian novelists paint doom & gloom not to predict the future, but to prevent it. Figuratively & literally speaking, firefighters create burnout control lines to prevent the flames from escaping the boundaries...
apparently the downwind of surveillance and societal control is blowing faster in our direction than anticipated.
Looking forward to the new 345-meter skyscraper, though it doesn't appear to be on schedule. Edward, where is this new Shangri-La Hotel situated?
Agreed. As a general rule, investing in assets hedges against inflation.
Hot & sour noodles that costs 2 yuan over a decade ago now costs 10 yuan... 15 yuan in another five years. The value of RMB saved in our proverbial piggy banks is steadily losing value.
However, anyone with cash savings on-hand who aims to maximize their earning potential ought to invest in the property market elsewhere in China, not in Spring City.
Despite sprawling high-rises along KRT stations, Kunming's property market growth has been lackluster compared to other provincial capitals, secondary or tertiary cities.
First and foremost, I'm very sorry Geezer for feeling that our argument over data was perceived as an ad hominem attack... often the case when one's core beliefs & values are threatened. GKM is a relatively tight-knit community, and you're a valuable cohabitant.
Said inconsistency of China's statistics is another topic of debate.
But for sake of argument, I'd agree with you. Every nation, company, and scientific research studies have intrinsic biases and may bend statistical data and models accordingly. Some more than others.
I will concede that.
As you astutely pointed out, that 9% may be exaggerated or misinterpreted as year-on-year reductions by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), when in fact that figure may represent reductions over a three-year period since this particular data collection started. Nonetheless, the more conservative estimate of 3% is still a big reduction of coal production.
Even if we view NBS' stats with incredulous caution, the overall downward trend of coal-fired power plants for production of eco-friendly EVs is a positive sign for the environment. Cheers.
China's capitalist motivation notwithstanding, now you're arguing against EV production in China by claiming, with static data, that "in 2016, 59% of China's electricity was produced in coal fired plants"...
but you failed to mention that is a 9% coal production reduction, 4.7% coal consumption reduction, and 2% coal as energy mix year-on-year reduction in 2016.
Furthermore, China is the global leader in the renewable energy movement... #1 in wind energy, #1 in hydropower (by far), #2 in solar energy (quickly gaining on Germany).
All trends point to eventual alignment of EV production dominance, from sustainable green energy sources.
@Geezer, "new research" that was published way back in 2012, and pertains to productions of electric vehicles (EVs) from dirty, coal-fired power plants...
granted CPC's technocrats ought to beef up oversight of carbon emission standards in China's supply-chain production & disposal processes of EVs en route to leading the e-mobility manufacturing revolution, trailed by Europe.
Norway, (where that research paper was written), has the highest per capita number of all-electric [battery only] cars in the world. They are a model nation for EVs, albeit produced from low carbon electricity sources. Luckily for them, 90% of electricity used by Norwegian homes are from hydropower.
As the paper suggested, EVs "make sense" if production comes from cleaner energy sources. This aligns with China's shift from coal energy dependency to renewable ones. This year, China has already halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants. A stark contrast to Trump's "bring back coal" initiative.
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Spring City's tallest skyscraper nears completion
Posted byLooking forward to the new 345-meter skyscraper, though it doesn't appear to be on schedule. Edward, where is this new Shangri-La Hotel situated?
Agreed. As a general rule, investing in assets hedges against inflation.
Hot & sour noodles that costs 2 yuan over a decade ago now costs 10 yuan... 15 yuan in another five years. The value of RMB saved in our proverbial piggy banks is steadily losing value.
However, anyone with cash savings on-hand who aims to maximize their earning potential ought to invest in the property market elsewhere in China, not in Spring City.
Despite sprawling high-rises along KRT stations, Kunming's property market growth has been lackluster compared to other provincial capitals, secondary or tertiary cities.
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
Posted byFirst and foremost, I'm very sorry Geezer for feeling that our argument over data was perceived as an ad hominem attack... often the case when one's core beliefs & values are threatened. GKM is a relatively tight-knit community, and you're a valuable cohabitant.
Said inconsistency of China's statistics is another topic of debate.
But for sake of argument, I'd agree with you. Every nation, company, and scientific research studies have intrinsic biases and may bend statistical data and models accordingly. Some more than others.
I will concede that.
As you astutely pointed out, that 9% may be exaggerated or misinterpreted as year-on-year reductions by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), when in fact that figure may represent reductions over a three-year period since this particular data collection started. Nonetheless, the more conservative estimate of 3% is still a big reduction of coal production.
Even if we view NBS' stats with incredulous caution, the overall downward trend of coal-fired power plants for production of eco-friendly EVs is a positive sign for the environment. Cheers.
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
Posted by@Geezer
China's capitalist motivation notwithstanding, now you're arguing against EV production in China by claiming, with static data, that "in 2016, 59% of China's electricity was produced in coal fired plants"...
but you failed to mention that is a 9% coal production reduction, 4.7% coal consumption reduction, and 2% coal as energy mix year-on-year reduction in 2016.
Furthermore, China is the global leader in the renewable energy movement... #1 in wind energy, #1 in hydropower (by far), #2 in solar energy (quickly gaining on Germany).
All trends point to eventual alignment of EV production dominance, from sustainable green energy sources.
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
Posted byNo Geezer, you said, "Bad idea, an environmental catastrophe in the making."
If EVs had your nimble backpedaling feature, they would sell like pancakes. ;)
China to phase out fossil fuel cars, boost domestic electric vehicle industry
Posted by@Geezer, "new research" that was published way back in 2012, and pertains to productions of electric vehicles (EVs) from dirty, coal-fired power plants...
granted CPC's technocrats ought to beef up oversight of carbon emission standards in China's supply-chain production & disposal processes of EVs en route to leading the e-mobility manufacturing revolution, trailed by Europe.
Norway, (where that research paper was written), has the highest per capita number of all-electric [battery only] cars in the world. They are a model nation for EVs, albeit produced from low carbon electricity sources. Luckily for them, 90% of electricity used by Norwegian homes are from hydropower.
As the paper suggested, EVs "make sense" if production comes from cleaner energy sources. This aligns with China's shift from coal energy dependency to renewable ones. This year, China has already halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants. A stark contrast to Trump's "bring back coal" initiative.