Have you gone to Carrefour?

Wuxi, China has two Carrefour stores.  Carrefour is in the news these days because of a campaign by Chinese to boycott the store for the trouble at the Paris torch relay and for reports that one of the company's principle shareholders had given money to the Dalai Lama.

I have not had an opportunity to go to Carrefour so I have had to ask other expats if they have gone and what they saw.  I won't have a chance to go to Carrefour because my wife has heard about the boycott campaign and so won't go.  She controls the purse and the wallet in our household.  Most expats, like me, are busy and so haven't gone.  One expat, who did go, told me that the store was busy as usual when he went.  He had been hoping to see a less busy Carrefour.

 

My new site has been restored to its default condition.  I will set up the site with a plan this time and so hopefully not delete anything essential like it appears I did the first time I played around with it. 

 

I will have to buy an electric bicycle when we move to the new apartment because we will live a long way from downtown and public transportation will be limited till they build the planned subway.  Peter from Canada just recently bought an electric bicycle at Carrefour for 24oo rmb.  He said it fit his big frame and he was given extras like  a rain jacket and lock when he bought it.

 

In the NHL playoffs, I see the Canadiens beat the Bruins 5 - 0 in the seventh game of their opening round playoff series.  Go Habs Go!

 

I took this video of our new apartment on Sunday.  Posting it here first will make it an AKIC blogspot exclusive.  Readers of the other site will just have to wait till Thursday.  People who read AKIC blogspot, as always, are the creme-de-la-creme.

 

 

According to Seablogger the world is about to cause itself a food and energy crisis.  Why?  Stupid policies.  I thought that the world had learned that markets and free trades are what create wealth.  But sadly they haven't learned at all.   I have seen signs in Wuxi of future energy troubles.  Mile long fuel lineups at gas stations is a common sight here in Wuxi.   Fuel prices are subsidized.  When the government raised gas prices last year, a strike of taxi drivers forced the authorities to allow a one rmb fuel surcharge to be added to the fare of all trips.

 

I share John Derbyshire's opinion that China is going to end up being like Mexico.  A large country where there is a dictatorship and the people just totter along.  A revolution, if it occurs, will mean a change in ruling cliques but little else.  Parts of the country will seem to function well.  The countryside will be a disaster.  Parts of the country will be a disaster unto themselves which  the central government will do little to change.  Just like Mexico.

 

I heard that the Chinese government is planning to have universal healthcare for its 1.3 billion citizens by 2020.  I don't think they will be able to do it.  They won't have the resources to deal with thousand long lineups of people wanting free healthcare.  The Chinese will have to continue with their pay-as-you-go system for fifty years at least before they could even have the infrastructure to expropriate and nationalize for a socialist health system.