Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

In Jiangsu province the local dignitaries are “lining up to buy newspaper pages and TV commercials to advertise
their performance.” According to the China Daily
the provincial government is in the process of collecting public
opinions for the year-end assessment of some 87 provincial bureaux and
services. As the outcome of these polls may effect career
perspectives of the senior civil servants the advertisements are
probably intended to help the public realize how well public money is
spent.

The China Daily has an article about the suicide numbers in
China. Every 2 minutes, 9 persons try to take to their live. 8
succeed. That means that according to these statistics a total of
2.120.400 Chinese kill themselves yearly. The World Health Organization
quotes the number of 873,000 people worldwide.
I never was good in mathematics so it could be that my calculations
were wrong but it seems that the Chinese statistics are almost 3 times
the worldwide numbers. The Beijing government has started a
hotline for those thinking of committing suicide. The hotline is
apparently a succes as only 10 % of callers get through. That’s about
the same ratio regarding the number of people who decide to stay alive.