Putin's Crusade Against Sick Men Of Asia

Moscow targets Chinese with raids amid Chinese virus terror
Russian authorities are going to significant lengths to keep the Chinese virus from surfacing in Moscow
By DARIA LITVINOVA and FRANCESCA EBEL

In this photo taken on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020, medical workers disinfect rooms in the sanatorium after quarantine period has ended in Bogandinsky in the Tyumen region, about 2150 kilometers (1344 miles) east of Moscow, Russia. 144 people who were evacuated from the epicenter of the Chinese coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, and were released from a 14-day quarantine in western Siberia. None of them tested positive for the Chinese virus. Russian authorities are going to great lengths to prevent the Chinese coronavirus from spreading in the capital and elsewhere.

MOSCOW -- Bus drivers in Moscow kept their WhatsApp group chat buzzing with questions this week about what to do if they spotted passengers who might be from China riding with them in the Russian capital.
“Some Asian-looking (people) have just got on. Probably Chinese. Should I call (the police)?” one driver messaged his peers. 

“How do I figure out if they’re Chinese? Should I ask them?” a colleague wondered.
The befuddlement reflected in screenshots of the group exchanges seen by The Associated Press had a common source -- instructions from Moscow's public transit operator Wednesday for drivers to call a dispatcher if Chinese nationals boarded their buses, Russian media reported.
A leaked email that the media reports said was sent by the state-owned transportation company Mosgortrans told dispatchers who took such calls to notify the police. 

The email, which the company immediately described on Twitter as fake, carried a one-word subject line: coronavirus.
Since the outbreak of the Chinese virus that has infected more than 76,000 people and killed more than 2,300 in mainland China, Russia has reported two cases. 

Both patients, Chinese nationals hospitalized in Siberia, recovered quickly. 

Russian authorities nevertheless are going to significant lengths to keep the Chinese virus from resurfacing and spreading.
Moscow officials ordered police raids of hotels, dormitories, apartment buildings and businesses to track down the shrinking number of Chinese remaining in the city. 

They also authorized the use of facial recognition technology to find those suspected of evading a 14-day self-quarantine period upon their arrival in Russia.“Conducting raids is an unpleasant task, but it is necessary, for the potential carriers of the Chinese virus as well,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement outlining various methods to find and track Chinese the city approved as a Chinese virus prevention strategy.
The effort to identify Chinese on public transportation applies not only to buses, but underground trains and street trams in Moscow, Russian media reported Wednesday.
Metro workers were instructed to stop riders from China and ask them to fill out questionnaires asking why they were in Russia and whether they observed the two-week quarantine, the reports said. 

The forms also ask respondents for their health condition and the address of where they are were staying.
In Yekaterinburg, a city located 1,790 kilometers (1,112 miles) away from Moscow in the Urals Mountains, members of the local Chinese community also are under watch. 

Self-styled Cossack patrols in the city hand out medical masks along with strong recommendations to visit a health clinic to Chinese residents.

The containment measures in the capital came as the Russian government instituted an indefinite ban on Chinese entering the country that could block up to 90% of travelers coming to Russia from China.

Weeks before, Russia shut down the country's long land border with China, suspended all trains and most flights between the two countries.
An employee of a Moscow-based company that employs Chinese nationals told the AP on condition of anonymity that police officers came to their office on Thursday and asked a dozen Chinese staffers to stay home for two weeks. 

The visit took place a little more than two weeks after these staffers returned from China and went through health checks at the airport, the employee said.
The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about what had happened.
The Moscow Metro confirmed to The Associated Press that the underground system was “actively monitoring the stations” and has a protocol in place for dealing with people who “have recently returned from China.”
“We ask to see their documents and to show us documents (proving) that if they have recently returned from the People’s Republic of China, they have undergone a two-week quarantine period,” Yulia Temnikova, Moscow Metro’s deputy chief of client and passenger services, said.
If an individual does not show proof of completing the quarantine, Metro workers ask the person to fill out the form and call an ambulance, Temnikova said.
Bus and tram drivers contacted their labor union about the instructions to look for Chinese and report them to the dispatch center. 

The drivers were outraged and didn’t know what to do, Public Transport Workers Union chairman Yuri Dashkov said.
“So he saw a Chinese, and then what?" Dashkov said. 

“How can he ascertain that he saw a Chinese, or a Vietnamese, or a Japanese, or (someone from the Russian region of) Yakutia?”
Dashkov showed the AP a photo of the email that officials at Mosgortrans were said to have sent out. He also showed three photos of on-bus electronic displays reading, “If Chinese nationals are discovered in the carriage, inform the dispatcher.”
The AP was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the email and the photos. 

Dashkov shared screenshots of what appeared to be a genuine bus drivers' group chat in WhatsApp.
While Moscow public transit operator Mosgortrans dismissed the email as phony on its official Twitter account Wednesday, the company told the AP in a statement two days later that it does “conduct monitoring” and “sends data to the medics when necessary.”
Mosgortrans referred additional questions to the detailed statement from Moscow's mayor, who on Friday acknowledged the sharp focus on Chinese in the city's Chinese virus-control plan.
Officials ordered everyone arriving from China to isolate themselves for two weeks, and those who skip the quarantine step will be identified through video surveillance and facial recognition technology, Sobyanin said. 

The systems give authorities the ability to “constantly control compliance with the protocol,” he said in the statement.
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the city's containment approach.

Temnikova from the Moscow Metro rejected accusations of racial profiling. 

Subway workers “mainly look at the passenger’s (health) condition," she said, and approach “people who need help.”
Addressing identification questions like the ones that worried the bus drivers, Temnikova said it should be “clear who could have arrived from China” because “it is obvious.”
The Cossacks of Yekaterinburg -- men in conservative, often pro-Kremlin groups claiming to be successors of the proud guards who policed the Russian Empire's frontiers -- took fighting the virus into their own hands three weeks ago. 

They also have a system of sorts for deciding who needs a face mask and advice to see a medical professional.
“Mainly we approach people from China because it is from them that the Chinese coronavirus came. They are the main source,” Igor Gorbunov, elder of the Ural Volunteer Cossack Corps, told the AP during one such patrol Friday.
“But not only them," Gorbunov continued. 

“There are different nationalities, there are many people of Asian appearance, and they seem to be vulnerable to this disease, the Chinese coronavirus, because it is them who are most often affected. Europeans are not yet affected much.”

Sick men of Asia

Sora Aoi: Japan's porn star who taught a Chinese generation about sex
By Fan Wang

When Japanese actress and former porn star Sora Aoi announced her marriage online, it set off a frenzy on Chinese social media.
That's because she has played a surprisingly significant role in the lives of a generation of young Chinese internet users.
On New Year's day, Ms Aoi posted a picture of her engagement ring on social media and announced the happy news to her fans around the world. 

Within 48 hours, the post got more than 170,000 comments and 830,000 likes on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.
"We grew up with your movies and will support you as always," said one fan.
Another Weibo user said: "You will always be my goddess… I wish you happiness."

'Teacher Aoi'
Ms Aoi started her career in pornography in the early 2000s. 

It is estimated that she had starred in more than 90 adult films, with new work being published every month between 2003 and 2005.
Pornography is illegal in China, but that didn't stop Chinese men going crazy for her.
"To many Chinese men who couldn't get proper sexual education in their adolescence, Sora Aoi became our teacher," 27-year-old "Liu Qiang" (not his real name) told the BBC.

Ms Aoi announced her marriage on Weibo

Her popularity in China soared at a time when the Chinese internet was developing at breakneck pace. 

New web portals, online communities and streaming sites emerged one after another, facilitating the spread of all kinds of information -- including illicit pornographic materials.
Mr Liu used to watch and share porn featuring Ms Aoi using MP4 players with friends when he was in high school. 

But as technology evolved, they turned to streaming websites to watch porn, as it was "much easier".
"Sora Aoi seized the right time to rise in China", says Prof Wai-ming Ng from Chinese University of Hong Kong's Department of Japanese Studies,
"When she became popular in the country, China was opening up to the outside world in various ways, including in terms of sexuality."

Fans rushed to see Ms Aoi when she attended a marketing event in China
Porn is a key source for information about sex for young people in China, as sex education is limited at school; and most Chinese parents shy away from teaching children about sex.
During a study conducted by Peking University in 2009, more than 22,000 questionnaires were distributed among young people aged between 15 and 24. 

They were asked to answer three questions on reproductive health -- but only 4.4% of participants managed to answer all the questions correctly.
The researchers also noted that many young people learn about sex "by themselves".
But Lin Yinhe, China's first female sexologist, cautions against porn being used as a tool of sex education.
Porn depicts sex in an exaggerated way, and some men may be "misled" as they compare themselves to porn actors, Ms Li told the BBC.
Experts have also argued that porn can distort young people's attitudes to sex, or contribute to sexual health problems.

'The Night of Sora Aoi'
With so much porn freely and readily available, what made Ms Aoi stand out?
Sex remains a taboo subject in Asian societies, but Ms Aoi said she "never looked down on herself" because of her career in pornography.

She always said she "enjoyed her job" because she could go abroad and speak to fans around the world.
Even when faced with disparaging comments online, Ms Aoi responds politely and with warmth, and her openness and frankness have helped her earn respect and appreciation from fans.
Ms Aoi opened her Twitter account on 11 April 2010. 

The news spread to China, where Twitter is banned, prompting a flood of Chinese fans to scale the Great Firewall of government censorship by using VPNs to follow her.
That night was later dubbed "the night of Sora Aoi" by Chinese fans.
Seven months later, Ms Aoi opened an account on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblog. 

She has earned more than 18 million followers so far -- more than the likes of Taylor Swift and David Beckham.
Ms Aoi formally retired from pornography in 2011, reinventing herself as a proper actress and singer.
She released music singles and has landed roles in online videos and movies -- and China is a huge market for her.
She appears to have put a lot of effort into familiarising herself with Chinese culture. 

Every post on Ms Aoi's Weibo is written in Chinese by herself, her manager told the BBC.
Apart from the language, she also started learning Chinese calligraphy. 

In 2013, a piece of her calligraphy was said to have been sold at 600,000 yuan ($92,000; £68,000).

'Belonging to the world'
It seems paradoxical that Ms Aoi is widely adored by Chinese fans, given the tumultuous relations between China and Japan.
There is longstanding bitterness in China over Japanese occupation during World War Two, and the countries remain in dispute over a group of Japanese islands known as the Senkaku Islands.
But Wenwei Huang, a Chinese writer who lives in Japan, thinks Ms Aoi has actually played a mitigating role in the civil relations between China and Japan.
"There was once a popular saying on China's internet -- 'Senkaku Islands belong to China, and Sora Aoi belongs to the world'. This is how she relieved the political and civil tensions."
Prof Ng says the Sora Aoi phenomenon in China is a symbol of how, in the age of globalisation, the way people define themselves is not only shaped by nationalities -- but by consumption of media content as well.
"For people who like Sora Aoi, no matter which country they are from, they would all feel like they belong to the same group."
Perhaps Ms Aoi serves as reminder to people across Asia -- despite different nationalities or political views -- that they have more in common than they realise.

Sick men of Asia

Sex Dolls Are Replacing China’s Missing Women
The country's gender gap has left young men desperate for plastic alternatives.
BY MEI FONG

China’s sharing economy took a new turn recently, as a new app, its symbol a single yellow banana, briefly brought rentable sex doll to Chinese phones. 

Called Ta Qu, to resemble the English word “Touch,” the app enables users to rent the life-sized dolls, which come in various models, for $45 a day — with a $1,200 deposit. 

The operators assured users that they would be washed between rentals.
But Ta Qu climaxed all too soon, and it was rapidly shut down by the authorities after the story went viral on the Chinese internet. 

But they’re only the tip of a massive and growing market in Chinese society for sex dolls, as the country grapples with a growing shortage of women.
Thanks to a long-held cultural preference for sons, coupled with over three decades of restrictive population planning policies, China is forecast to have over 30 million surplus men by 2030. 

This preference for boys has slowly dwindled, especially in the cities, but the country still faces a critical gap for the next few decades.
To help alleviate this and other demographic woes, Beijing in 2015 announced a switch to a nationwide two-child policy, but the damage to this generation’s sexual relationships has already been done. 

Chinese authorities cannot magic up a Canadian-sized population of women to be the wives, mothers, and caregivers the country desperately needs now.
This has led the nation in search of solutions, ranging from the improbable — proposals to revive wife-sharing — to the unspeakable, such as a rise in sex trafficking.
It has also led to a dramatic rise in the popularity of sex toys for lonely men.

While reliable industrywide numbers are unavailable, sales of sex toys on online platforms such as Alibaba and Taobao surged an average of 50 percent year-on-year in the last five years, according to a report by Global Times. 

The lifestyle news site StartUp Living China reported last year that Singles Day — China’s biggest online shopping event — saw a surge in the sale of sex dolls, with one seller offloading 500 units with an average of one sale per minute. 

Over 65 percent of sex toys sold online were to males between the ages of 18 to 29, according to the report.
I didn’t anticipate this explosion in 2013, when I visited a sex doll factory in Dongguan, southern China. 

I was researching my book on the consequences of the one-child policy and was curious about where a nationwide absence of women might lead. 

But I was operating more on hunch than certainty that demand for sex dolls would escalate. 

Even the company I profiled, Hitdoll, was hinging their business model on a mix of domestic and global sales. 

Proprietor Vincent He wasn’t sure China’s burgeoning market of bachelors would be their best customer base, saying, “Thirty-year-old single men tend not to spend the money on dolls. They can go for real women.”
That said, sex toy usage — though not dolls — was already being normalized in China to a degree that was not the case in the West, in part propelled by a vast, and mostly male, migrant population separated from their families. 

I knew from my reporting that the shopping areas they frequented sold products such as artificial vaginas. 

There seemed to be less social stigma around the idea than in the West, judged both by the prominence with which they were displayed in the ubiquitous corner sex stores and the open discussion of the virtues and flaws of different devices in male-dominated forums online.
Aside from demographics, China has a demonstrated manufacturing capacity to bring prices down and tip sex dolls from niche to mainstream, a combustible mix.
With this in mind, in 2013 I set out to Dongguan, the pulsing heart of China’s manufacturing belt in the south. 

Clad in a leather jacket and jeans, He, an affable man in his early 50s, met me at his workshop. 

His company used to make office furniture for export, but rising labor costs had pushed profits down, so they began casting around for a new product.

Manufacturer Vincent He demonstrates the features of his sex dolls in his Dongguan factory during a 2013 visit. 

The workshop was small, churning out some 10-12 customizable life-sized models shipped out in coffin-like crates every month. 

Scantily clad buxom models lounged in chairs; some, like the Venus de Milo, missing limbs. 

He and his employees showed me around the premises with a matter-of-fact air, cupping rubbery teats and parting silicone thighs with as much sangfroid as if they were still making office chairs. “The nipples — they are very tough,” said He, tugging vigorously. 

“Normal ones,” he said, “could never withstand such treatment.” 

At this point all major companies making high-end dolls were overseas. 

China was better known for cheaper blow-up dolls that could be easily transported. 

Leading companies such as California-based Abyss Creations crafted customizable models capable of limited speech and body warmth costing about $8,000 to $10,000. 

Hitdoll, in time-honored Chinese manufacturing tradition, was looking to replicate this with fewer features and a much lower price point.
For three years, Hitdoll experimented with different prototypes at a test facility in Guangzhou’s university district. 

They used college students as testers, advertising with flyers that said things like, “Fake Dolls, Real Love.”
To my surprise, these testers formed a group that met regularly to eat and sing karaoke. 

They even had a name, the Kawaii Club — using a Japanese term for cuteness, especially as applied to young women, adopted into Chinese. 

Feng Wengguang, a former Guangdong University of Technology student, was a member. 

His description of his experiences sounded like a perverse telling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Early on, the Kawaii Club members complained the prototypes were too stiff, too cold, too unreal. (The manager, He, remembered receiving feedback such as, “Your doll is so cold, like a dead body.”)
Hitdoll’s makers experimented with materials (silicone and TPE, or thermoplastic elastomers, found in bottle-cap liners and dental guards) breast size (C to EE) hair (synthetic, animal, human) and ethnicity (African, Asian, Caucasian).

Feng , then 24, viewed all this as playful experimentation. 

He never saw himself as part of Hitdoll’s audience demographic.

He and the other Kawaii Club members were sure they could “find real woman.”
Weren’t they worried about hygiene issues? 

Vincent He showed me the disposable rubber vaginas they used. 

Each Kawaii member got to keep them after the trials, he said. 

It was a real perk, he assured me: such things typically retailed for about $15. 

All in all, the Kawaii Club soldiered through 100 prototypes before Hitdoll developed a model worthy of exhibiting at the Guangzhou Sex Culture Festival.
Most of that reporting trip didn’t find its way into my book. 

For one thing, I worried that a great deal of this was speculative. 

Nobody knew for sure how China’s gender gap would play out in the long run, and I didn’t want to overstate the importance of what might be a small-bore attempt to address a big problem.

The head of a sex doll made by the HitDoll factory in Dongguan, taken in 2013.

It also sounded unbelievable, especially to Western ears. 

A sex doll maker called “He,” pronounced “Her”? 

And his workshop was in Guangzhou’s university district, known in Chinese as Longdong? (I still remember firmly pressing the “delete” button on my computer after spelling it out.)
In retrospect, my visit to Dongguan was significant given China’s current gender chaos. 

The city, a manufacturing hub of the Chinese south, embodies skewed gender relations: it’s powered by female factory workers, yet ruled by men. 

In its heyday, visiting male executives spent several months there away from their wives, with extended off-work bacchanals at the numerous karaoke bars, clubs, and brothels that earned Dongguan the nickname “Eastern Amsterdam.” 

Like Silicon Valley, Dongguan owes its existence to globalization and expansiveness but is riddled with hidebound, intense sexism. 

There is perhaps no more apt place for birthing the instruments that could take China’s gender wars into its next phase.
Soon after my visit, the government launched a major crackdown on prostitution in Dongguan, turning the notorious red-light city a “deep pink.” 

The crackdown, which began on Valentine’s Day, proved so ruinous it wiped out an estimated $8 billion in takings, about one-tenth of the city’s total revenues, according to Lin Jiang, a finance professor at Sun Yat-sen University.
Dongguan never completely recovered its anything-goes air as China’s mecca of prostitution. 

But as trading of real women flagged, the market for fake women in China began to take off.
The increasing use of sex dolls has of course amplified concerns as to whether this sexually objectifies real women and encourages a Westworld-like rise in violence. 

“Men’s rights activists” online have long argued that widespread use of sex dolls will deprive women of their power over men.

Some supporters of sex dolls even argue it could actually decrease rape culture and reduce demand for sex trafficking.

The U.S. State Department this year named China one of the worst offenders in the global sex trade. 

It’s unclear exactly how many women are trafficked into China from neighboring countries, but numbers are definitely on the rise, spurred by the absence of young women from the marriage market, especially in rural areas. 

Vietnam alone had an estimated 4,500 women trafficked between 2011-2015, with 70 percent taken to China, where a Vietnamese “bride” could fetch about $18,500.
These arguments are of course echoed in other parts of the world where usage of sex robots are increasingly more popular, including even the opening of a sex doll brothel in Spain. 

But what might appear to be a whimsical desire in, say, Japan, looks expeditious in Jiangxi, where the gender ratio is 138 men to 100 women. (The average global ratio is 105 men for 100 women.)

Sex dolls on display at the 2016 Shanghai International Adult Toys and Reproductive Health Exhibition in Shanghai on April 14, 2016.

China’s gender gap is already contributing to a rise in violent crime, with China’s bachelors demonstrating lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression and aggression. 

The gains made by its educated female workforce are already sparking nostalgia for the past, including the rising popularity of lectures promoting subservient women. 

In my book, I described one such workshop, where the lecturer, Ding Xuan, said strong women are more cancer-prone because, “The gods are helping you, as you do not want to be a woman any more.”
Linda Pittwood, who studies the representation of women in Chinese art, said the dolls are “an extreme representation of women as submissive objects of fantasy, available to be borrowed around by a number of men.” 

She added, “These are all really damaging ideas, which I think will leak out from the sex doll-sharing service and reinforce where women are regarded in these ways in wider culture.”
The controversy is bound to intensify as sex dolls become more popular — and lifelike. 

Hitdoll’s competitors, the Dalian-based DS Doll and 2015 newcomer J-Suntech, are already rolling out models that can be programmed for limited speech and movements through smartphone apps. (The models on Ta Qu’s stymied doll-share app can be programmed to make moaning sounds.)
It’s ironic, but arguments that sex dolls are dehumanizing will only strengthen as the models become more realistic.

Ta Qu promised a variety of fantasy women, from “Wonder Women” to “Hong Kong Student.” 

But they all shared the same still, unnatural face, and fell squarely into the uncanny valley between human and machine. 

More realistic dolls, however, could blur the boundaries between real women and sex objects.

“Realistic” women are the aim of many Chinese robot-makers, even if most of them aren’t doing it for straight-up sexual purposes. 

Jia Jia, developed by the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, was able to conduct a stilted interview with Wired writer Kevin Kelly. 

A former Huawei computer engineer created a robot he found so realistic he “married” it in 2016. Fed up of being teased about his bachelor status, Zheng Jiajia held a faux marriage ceremony with robot Yingying, vowing to eventually upgrade the robot’s abilities until it can walk and do housework.
Still, a country desperately trying to raise birth rates and keep its economy churning might have bigger problems. 

As Pittwood pointed out, “That is one thing that the sex dolls can’t offer: babies.”

Sick Men of Asia

A psychologist explains why Chinese people only have the mental age of a six-month-old
By Zheping Huang

According to Sigmund Freud, a human being’s psychosexual development has five stages: the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital. 

During the oral stage spanning from birth until the age of one, an infant satisfies its desires simply by putting all sorts of things into its mouth, whether it’s a pencil or its mother’s breast.
Most Chinese people have never developed beyond the oral stage of Freud’s theory and have the mental age of a six-month-old, argues psychologist Wu Zhihong. 

In his recently published book Nation of Giant Infants, Wu takes the psychological viewpoint to explain a wide range of social problems in China, including mama’s boys, tensions between mothers and daughter-in-laws, and suicides of left-behind rural kids. 

He claims that the “giant infant dream” is deeply rooted in the Chinese tradition of collectivism and filial piety.
“Most Chinese people are infants in search of their mothers,” Wu writes.

“Nation of Giant Infants”

The 42-year-old provides mental health counseling in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and is the author of a series of best-sellers on psychology. 

Prior to that, he wrote a column for the Guangzhou Daily newspaper. 

Published in December, his latest work Nation of Giant Infants has recently been removed from Chinese bookshops, drawing speculation among Chinese internet users that censors banned the book because it is offensive to Chinese beliefs and traditions.
The publisher, Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, pulled Wu’s book off shelves in both physical and online stores in China in mid-February. 

A staffer with the publisher said that the removal was due to bad print quality when asked by Quartz, but didn’t say when the book will become available again. 

An assistant to Wu said the publisher told her the same.
But that doesn’t explain why Luogic Talkshow, a popular online talkshow *(link in Chinese) produced by former TV anchor Luo Zhenyu, scrapped an episode on Wu’s book. 

Some online discussions about the removal of the book have also been deleted (link in Chinese).
According to Wu, infants younger than six months live in symbiosis with their mothers. 

They can’t tell themselves apart from the outside world. 

They want everything to follow their own rules. 

And they don’t recognize anything between the two extremes of good and bad. 

Wu says these three characteristics summarize the majority of Chinese people.
For example, in an extended family in China, Wu writes, “Your business is my business, mine is also yours. I take too much responsibility for you, and you take too much for me. Otherwise you are a jerk, and I’ll feel guilty.” 

He notes in a recent interview (link in Chinese) that the phenomenon is reflected in a new hit Chinese dating show, where parents pick partners for their kids.
From a social perspective, Wu notes, Chinese people place a strong emphasis on collectivism because they can’t live on their own, both spiritually and materially speaking. 

They rely on guanxi, or personal connections, to get things done. 

Meanwhile, they prefer to let powerful figures such as their parents or the government make decisions for them.
Wu also challenges the Chinese government. 

He says mothers dominate Chinese families, while fathers are often missing in the role of a parent—just like Chinese rulers are absent in the role of government.
“Good fathers rarely exist, and more often they are bastards having desires,” he writes. 

“If Chinese families can have more powerful, good fathers, our politics will perhaps be more powerful and honest.”

Sick Men of Asia 东亚病夫

2 runners die after collapsing in China half-marathon

AP

One runner suffered sudden heart failure before the finish line while the other one died after crossing the finish line.

Organizers of a half-marathon in southern China say two runners collapsed and later died during the event.
One runner suffered sudden heart failure Saturday 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) from the finish of the Xiamen International Half-Marathon in the coastal city of the same name. 

A second runner died after crossing the finish line.
Municipalities throughout China have organized such road races as publicity events, despite the relative lack of interest in jogging as a pastime among Chinese.
Few if any races require medical checks for participants, while high levels of smoking, high-fat diets and heavy urban pollution raise the health risks for runners drawn from among the general public.
Facing growing levels of obesity, general ill-health and an aging population, the government has sought to promote exercise and healthy pastimes.

Sick men of Asia

Study: China's sperm is getting worse
By Yuan Yang and Hudson Lockett

Beijing’s efforts to reinvigorate China’s birth rate, one of the lowest in the world, face a serious obstacle as semen quality plummets among young male donors, research suggests.
Last year fewer than a fifth of young men who donated sperm in the inland province of Hunan had sufficiently healthy semen to qualify as a donor, according to a 15-year study of more than 30,000 applicants. 

In 2001 more than half qualified.
Local media reports indicate Hunan is not the only province suffering a shortage in qualified donors. State broadcaster China Radio International recently reported that a sperm bank in Henan province had dropped minimum height and education requirements for donors and was offering to store their semen free of charge for three decades in an effort to make up its own deficit.
“Growing evidence seems to suggest that male infertility is increasingly becoming a serious concern in the entire country,” said Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. 

If shown to reflect a broader trend, such findings would further complicate China’s mounting demographic problems.
China’s fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have during her child-bearing years — was 1.05 last year, according to data from the Chinese government’s annual “1 per cent” population survey, which polls about 17m citizens each year.
The bottom territories in a World Bank 2014 survey — South Korea, Portugal, Hong Kong and Macau — had fertility rates of 1.2, against a global average of 2.5. 

That survey estimated China’s fertility at 1.6, still far below the 2.1 births per woman needed to keep a country’s population from shrinking.
China is ageing rapidly, leading to a shortage of young workers and warnings of a pensions crisis, but its fertility rate has long been in decline. 

From a peak of 6.4 births per woman in 1965 it had fallen to 2.8 by 1979, the year the notorious one-child policy was introduced amid fears of runaway population growth. 

That regime led to widespread sex-selective abortion, resulting in a significantly skewed sex ratio.
The blanket policy was scrapped late last year for a two-child policy. 

But previous loosening of the old policy has fallen short of policymakers’ hopes in raising the country’s birth rate, with many Chinese couples apparently unwilling to take advantage of the chance to have a second child.
“The situation is probably worse than expected,” said Mr Huang, noting that the results of a government-commissioned national study on infertility in China that had been scheduled to end in 2011 had still not been made public. 

Some researchers also say previous census results have been manipulated by family planning officials in regions with a pro-birth policy, who inflate birth rates in order to make their policies look more effective.
The researchers in the Hunan semen study, published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility, say there is no clear explanation for why donors’ reproductive health declined so rapidly. 

But they point to “increased environmental pollution, including pollution of water, air and food”, as a possible explanation.
However, World Health Organisation spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said the WHO could not yet determine with certainty which factors had caused deterioration in certain or multiple countries, as studies often employed different methodologies to analyse semen. 

He also cautioned that semen quality did not necessarily correlate directly with male fertility.
“It should be noted that male reproductive health can be affected by many complex factors,” including lifestyle, the environment and concomitant diseases, he said. 

“More research is needed to enable sound guidance or policy advice concerning deteriorating semen quality.”