My first Blog and it is about China

This is my first try to blog.

I am born in New Zealand, still a real Kiwi, retired now and have Hong Kong as my base, and I lived and worked almost all my life in China. I should know something about the place, how it works and what makes it tick and where it is heading.

I travel a loot in China, I have local ID so that makes it easy to go anywhere, even places as Tibet, and I read enough Chinese to get around and I travel and live like the Chinese. Someone once told me I was "environmentally damaged". Maybe true, but I fit in easily. People here are not even noticing I am a "foreigner". I am seen as one of them, and I feel proud of that.

I am an old bugger, a chip out of the old block, still very much a passionate Kiwi, and I am passionate about the truth, a clean nice world to live in, and personal freedom and openness. That is the reason I have staid here in China, personal freedom and freedom of expression and the right to remain private or even anonymous is great in China. Much better than New Zealand, believe me.

Many would feel it strange that I say that, after hearing about China's censorship and "oppression". Well, in New Zealand you are supervised, checked and controlled to the hilt. Your Internet browsing is logged, cameras register every move, regular road blocks and cameras keep tabs of you, and good help those who do not have a "Joe Karam" to support them in the in the corrupt justice system which is now so bad that even the judges have started to raise concerns publicly.

Good help those who step outside the "norm" and boundaries the officials and business elite have laid down, and those who dare to speak out against the establishment get very quickly silenced with the help of hundred year old laws, defamation laws, million dollar damages and threats of bankruptcy and ostracism forever from the business, political, or social society.

I am furious that it has gone as far as Asia are now viewing New Zealand as the "Nigeria" of the South Pacific exercising state racism, full of scam operators that take your money and future, and seemingly always get away with it

New Zealand has a great future, if Kiwis just cared to pick up the opportunity. Now they are starving to death in a closet full of canned food, jusr because they have not figured out how to use the can opener. The whole country is on the slippery slope towards a national financial disaster.

The way to handle this as far as China goes is to hire and bring in Kiwis who understand China, who has long and recent experience, has the China competence, who can handle the Chinese and be the counterweight, taking care of New Zealand jobs and interests.

There are not many of those Kiwis around, most live in China now, but for now they seems to be ostracized, "persona non grata", unwanted, in the beancounter based New Zealand corporate world.

Until we see a change, we will see more disasters as Richina, AFFCO, Lions and Fonterra. The Chinese government has put the Fonterra disaster with the dead and injured children and Fonterra cover up behind them, the Chinese public has definitely not.

You want a future for New Zealand, get the people involved who can create it, not the proven failures as now. Rick (harriss.rick@gmail.com)