You are on page 1of 1

we bcache .go o gle use rco nt e nt .co m https://webcache.go o gleuserco ntent.co m/search? q=cache:VlAFCbFbGqgJ:o nline.wsj.co m/article/0,,SB110867882251758232,00.

html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&client=firefo x-

An 'Annie Hall' Moment


In the Woody Allen movie "Annie Hall" a character is sounding of f about the Canadian media theorist Marshall MacLuhan when the subject himself appears and says: "Excuse me, I'm Marshall MacLuhan. You know nothing of my work." Woody Allen then turns to the audience and asks, "don't you wish lif e were like that?" In Hong Kong yesterday it was Nobel prize economist Amartya Sen doing the sounding of f , praising the state medical system in China under the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Sen asserted that Maoist China had actually made great strides in medicine, bringing down child mortality rates and prolonging lif e expectancy. Moving to a privatized system was making the system less f air and ef f icient, said the Nobel laureate, who's behind many U.N. economic works, such as the much-heralded "Human Development Index." To back up his remarkable claim, Mr. Sen said that the rate of growth in lif e expectancy in China was slowing down. Or at least it was doing so compared to India, which is catching up with China in lif e expectancy. "T he gap between India and China has gone f rom 14 years to seven (since 1979) because of moving f rom a Canada-like system to a U.S. like system," said Mr. Sen, adding that he thought this change by China was a mistake. But, alas, there was someone in the audience who actually had lived through the Cultural Revolution in China, and had been one of Mao's "baref oot doctors." He didn't see things quite the same way as Mr. Sen. In f act, he said the comments had quite surprised him. "I observed with my own eyes the total absence of medicine in some parts of China. T he system was totally unsustainable. We used to admire India," said Weijian Shan, now a banker in Hong Kong. Mr. Shan then added an anecdote that tickled the audience, telling how when he f irst visited Taiwan in the 1980s and saw young medical school graduates serving in the countryside, he thought to himself , "China ought to copy Taiwan." Mr. Shan added, about Mao's medicine, "If they had made the system optional, nobody would have opted f or it." Mr. Sen may have thought he was going to have an easy audience. He was, af ter all, introduced by a local American resident -- a member of Democrats Abroad -- who praised his work as something President George W. Bush should read, so he would learn that supporting f reedom required more than just sending in the Marines. And indeed, af ter Mr. Sen's observations -- NAT O is partly responsible f or T hird World debt and f or turning back Af rica's democratic evolution; more people died of AIDS on Sept. 11, 2001, than in the terrorist attack; Social Security, the U.S. pension system, is not at a crisis point -- it seemed that it was going to be a onesided af ternoon. Except f or the man in the audience who actually had lived through that glorious Maoist era, and who provided the Annie Hall moment.

You might also like