As I was looking through Taiwan News online I found an article for today about a new policy that Taiwanese McDonalds locations are implementing, and I thought it was applicable to some of the points that we have made in class about McDonalds.  It was a short article, but basically Taiwanese McDonalds are beginning to use score cards where frequent customers can accumulate points on a card that they can trade in later for “free” items.  This policy is nothing new to the fast food industry, and many different restaurants use similar policies.  However, it does show how McDonalds is using different strategies to accumulate a larger customer basis, and get more people in the habit it eating their food all across the world.  This is similar to how they have events for children and give away toys to get children in the habit of eating there, but seems to be targeted at an older audience who have the ability and responsibility to keep track of their points.  This adds a sense of fun and excitement to eating there where the more you spend the more free stuff you can get for your points.  Even though in reality those participating are spending more money.

The movie to live was very interesting, and did have a clear message by the end of it that was difficult to pick up on in the beginning.  It made use the Yuigi’s set of puppets, which he used to provide for his family after he gambled away their entire livelihood, as a symbol to show the resiliency of the Chinese people through hard times and a turbulent and fast changing world.  And not only that, but they show how despite all of the changes that China was going through at this time, that traditions still held a place in the new Chinese world, and could still be relevant.  However, now that the puppets have been burned by the family it will be interesting to see how that affects the rest of the story.

Although China has taken many steps towards more democratic and capitalist styles of government and economics, the authoritarian nature of the regime is still alive and well in the daily lives of its citizens.  According to BBC, Chinese lawyer Wang Quanzhang was detained by Chinese authorities in 2015, along with many other Chinese lawyers.  The difference in the case of Mr. Wang however, is that he has not been heard from at all for the last two years by family, friends, or his lawyer.  Even his own wife does not know if he is dead or alive.  The authorities have not afforded him the right to contact with the outside world.  This crackdown, the “709” crackdown as it’s now known – a reference to 9 July, the date it began – is widely seen as a sign of a growing intolerance of dissent under President Xi Jinping.  Many of those who have been detained have been given further investigations, leading to long jail sentences for most.  There have been allegations that some of the lawyers have been tortured during their detention, force-fed drugs, shackled, beaten and kept in stress positions for long periods of time.  Many have confessed, most have been public confessions on state-run television.  Many believe that these confessions are false, only given to escape the conditions that they were put under.  His wife believes that his further incarceration is due to him being unwilling to compromise with the authorities.  It is difficult to say what exactly Mr. Wang has been incarcerated for, but his work has involved advocating for many things that are contrary to party rules, particularly defending those on trial for practicing China’s spiritual movement.  In any case, this sort of behavior by the party is a perfect example of how insecure the CCP actually is, and how far they are willing to go to intimidate their citizens into submission, and despite their progress in other areas, the issue of human rights is still one that is controversial at best in China.

This documentary was very interesting and informative in many ways. First of all, it had a very wide range of evidence to support their argument about the pollution and smog problem in China.  They used not only data and tables, but they brought in interviews with doctors talking about health problems, used statistics showing correlation between pollution and lung cancer deaths.  They also used comparative historical evidence with other countries who have gone through similar crisis in the past to highlight the potential problems that could be in store for China.  However, the most effective form of evidence and argument that was used multiple times throughout the talk was the connection to average Chinese people, and especially when she makes a personal connection to the problem through the troubles she went through with her daughter.  The involvement of interview with average citizens as well as children offered a very interesting perspective on the pollution problem.  One thing that especially surprised me was the fact that a lot of Chinese citizens seemed to be unaware of the severity of the pollution, or that pollution even existed in their cities at all.  She even admitted herself that she, as a journalist, was fed the lie that it wasn’t smog that she was seeing on a daily basis, but simply just fog, and she embarrassingly admitted to buying into that story.  Even the workers in the factory that she visited seemed to be in denial about the fact that they were giving off so much pollution and their filters were not working properly.  So it seems that the main problem with pollution is not the smog itself and the health detriments, but just the need to educate people who seem to be being kept in the dark by the government who does not enforce many standards of carbon emissions.   Another interesting point that she talked about was that Chinese companies such as steel, technology, and big name companies such as Coca Cola who outsource Chinese labor, are overproducing goods, which has lead to the increase in emissions as well.  The government props up these companies and allows for the overproduction without regulation of emissions.   This increase in production has a ripple effect.  It leads to growth in infrastructure, which leads to increase in cars, which leads again to more emissions.