Press conference: Care & rehabilitation Expo China 2008

Related story: Beijing to hold Care & Rehabilitation Expo China 2008

Date/Time: 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, September 9

Venue: Main Press Conference (MPC)

Wang Hui

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, friends from the media. I am very happy to meet you all again at the MPC. This is the third day of the Paralympics. In the course of watching the Games, I am sure you are all experiencing great feeling and emotions. Today's press conference is directly related to these feelings and emotions. Today's topic is care & rehabilitation Expo China 2008. We are going to give some info about this Expo. We are going to talk about various devices that are going to be displayed at the Expo for people with disabilities. We have invited today Cheng Kai, vice president of China Disabled Persons Federation; Yuan Xinli, vice director of General Office of National Aging Committee; You Hong, director of Covering Department of China Disabled Persons Federation; and Xu Xiaoming, director of China Disabled Persons Assistive Devices Center. Now, I would like to invite Mr. Cheng Kai to say a few words.

Cheng Kai gives the speech

Cheng Kai

Ladies and gentlemen, friends from the media, good morning. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to come and tell you about the work we are doing in the area of disability. The care and rehabilitation expo in China will be held between September 11-13 at the China International Exhibition Center. It's the old and former center. You know we have two centers, one of them is in Shunyi and the other is the old China International Exhibition Center. This is going to be one of the activities to be organized during the Paralympics.

We will put on display all sorts of assistive devices, rehabilitation equipment and products for the care of people with disability and the aging. It is a dedicated exhibition. There are some 175 institutions from 16 countries and regions participating, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea, China, Chinese Taipei, and Hong Kong.

Up until the present day, this is the largest such exhibition held in China. It will gather together the largest number of organizations and the largest number of products. As you all know, China has 83 million people with disability and 150 million senior citizens. All sorts of assistive devices can compensate for the loss of function, improve the living circumstances and the quality of life.

This is an important tool for improving the general situation of such people. This kind of exhibition will allow people with disability and the elderly and help them have a direct experience and understanding of all sorts of assistive devices and tools. It is also a method by which we will inform the public everything that is happening in the area of the assistive devices, the international experience in this area. It will be a very effective tool for enhancing popular attention and concern for people with disability and the elderly. We will also promote the development of the whole center. In the developed countries particularly in Europe, US, Hong Kong and Japan.

The assistive devices for people with disability including those for the elderly, the rehabilitation equipment and care products that are extremely well developed. The growth in this area is amazing. There are the host of different products and different categories and many of these are widely known among the general population. China has one of the largest population of people with disability, 83 million people with disability and 150 million elderly.

However, the production and the use of such assistive devices are still lagging behind other countries, in certain areas very severely lagging behind. So we don't have that many products which can provide barrier free facilities, products for independent living, home conversion and recreation. In this area, we don't have that many products. If we can learn from abroad and all the different products that they, this will greatly enhance the condition of the disabled population as well as the elderly.

This will promote the development of China's own condition of the disabled population and elderly population and also the promote China's own section. At this extent, there will be on display all sorts of barrier-free facilities, walking assistive devices, sight and hearing aids, and care products rehabilitations products, informational and assistive home devices. They will demonstrate the use of high technology. Also being designed for the user in mind, these products, as I said, are already widely used in developed countries, for instance, wheelchairs, independent specialized chairs, and vehicles for the elderly.

The one is also the first time that such a large number of organization and enterprises dedicated to the provisional services for the disabled will appear in China. At the same time, we are also going to hold the fifth China Info Accessibility Forum and International Care and Rehabilitation Forum. A number of government officials and experts from Japan and Sweden will come to demonstrate these various devices and to talk about the various policies for the welfare of people with disability and the elderly.

Beijing's Disabled Persons' Federation and the National Office of the Aging will organize people with disability and senior citizens to visit the exhibition. We particularly encourage all those who are involved in the work with the elderly and disability to come and see the Expo. BOCOG and IPC have included this activity as one of places where we will take athletes every day. There will be a shuttle bus in the morning and in the afternoon everyday for people from all countries, Chinese athletes, as well as international ones to the Expo to see the displays and purchase things.

There will be a number of trials of assistant devices. People can try them out and get a real feel. We provide advice and consultation on the spot. My friends, everybody is focusing very much on people with disability in China and particularly on the Paralympics. We hope this Care and Rehabilitation Expo China 2008 will be an important event and be well reported in the media. It will be an important event of the Paralympics and very glorious event outside the Games themselves.

Wang Hui, the host of the press conference

Wang Hui

Thank you very much Mr. Cheng Kai. Clearly, this is a very important activity. I hope our friends from the media will report this as extensively as possible.

Nanfang Metropolis News

What help do you think this kind of expo will be to the disabled in China? What is the importance of this Expo? Could you talk about the prospect and goals of the whole area of working for the disabled in the future?

Cheng Kai

Why we are putting the Expo at the same time as the Paralympics. This shows the concern of BOCOG of this area. It also demonstrates that we are participating in this huge social effort to try to draw attention to the conditions of the disabled and the elderly. As for the significance of this activity, I think I already said in my few comments just now. As I said, there are now very professional and dedicated organizations that are dealing with the disabled and the elderly. In order to provide this professional care, they need to know what is the available out there.

So this time we have invited all the professionals in this area to come to not only to display but particularly come and visit the Expo. This arrangement is for one purpose only, that is to improve and enhance the quality and level and professionalism of all services and care given to the disabled and elderly so that we can provide better services overall. For the disabled, if you go to the Expo, you will see there are a number of large Expo, like in Tokyo, Germany and Dubai. And we hope that this is the fourth largest of such Expo. Each is extremely important. We have reported that we've been to Tokyo and they have seen this kind of events that are like festival for the disabled.

People can come and see the new devices and can come and try them out and buy them and these are very moving events that take place. Mr. Lv Shiming from the CDPF is a heavily disabled person who using a wheelchair. He found out there is a device that can help wheelchair person stand up. He tried it out for over an hour. He was very encouraged. So this shows that because of the functional limitations of people with disability, they need high technology methods to stand up, to hear to see or to go to places they want to go so they can fulfill their dreams. So for the people with disability, any kind of expo is something that they are most happy about and they want to go there very badly. In the next two days time, I hope you can come to come and see and experience it themselves.

The second is a big question, the goals and prospects of the whole area for the disabled in China. As we know, the undertaking for disabled is a flash point of human rights in China and an important part to build up a harmonious society. It is a daunting task for us to press ahead the overall social undertaking and to assist the disadvantaged population. In our cause, if you want to summarize goals and objectives, first we will up here to the motor of building China's socialism with characteristics and every effort will be carried out according to laws to promote the rights and interests of the disabled. Secondly, we will improve government provided services for the disabled in terms of quality and coverage and encourage the disabled to be self-determined and self-confident and self- reliant.

Through the Games, we can see that while as soon as they are given some devices, they can perform as average person in terms of sports events. Other fields of endeavor, we do have a Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Disabled Persons. Starting the second of May, the international convention on the rights of the disabled persons will start to be affective, equal opportunities to the disabled people in all sectors of the social undertaking and activities. That is about transcendence, integration and equality. That is my general answer to your question.

Reporter

Thank you. My question is not relevant to the Expo. My question is for Cheng Kai. On September 6, the guide dog attracted a lot of attention. But on the streets of Beijing, we seldom see guide dogs. What about the usage of the guide dog for the blind in China? How are guide dogs available to the blind?

Cheng Kai

It is a very technical question. I am afraid I can't provide you perfectly satisfactory answer. So far as the services of the guide dogs are concerned, it is commonly adopted in the developed countries to help the blinds. It is said that there are 20,000 or 30,000 guide dogs to serve the blinds. However, for the training, and fees and costs associated with training, guide dog is very high. To have a guide dog trained in China averages between 100,000 RMB and 200,000 RMB. Maybe higher. Everyone has read the story and watched the movie about the little Q guide dog, and it is a very complicated process to have a guide dog trained with professional training methodology, process and mechanism. And also we need that breed of dogs to be identified as guide dogs. And most importantly, we need to train the blinds on how to make use of those guide dogs. And we need to have an enabling social system, such as traffic light system and road and other aspects, all of which must facilitate the use of guide dogs. So the Spanish delegation used two black guide dogs during the parade of the Opening Ceremony parade. Also athlete Paralympian Ping Yali was guided by a guide dog in the last relay of the torch relay before the cauldron was lit. So the guide dog is part and parcel of the assistive technology. It helps to deliver more confidence, self reassurance of the blinds. They don't want to be led by other human beings. They prefer being led by guide dogs. In China, we have begun to see some guide dogs, especially bought by blind persons who are quite well off. In the city of Dalian and Shanghai, we have two training facilities for those dogs. On a yearly basis, we can only train some 3 to 5 dogs of such a kind in those bases. But that offers some hope for the blinds in China. It's a piece of good news for us. With the Paralympic Games, I'm confident that there will be more guide dogs in the streets so that they can deliver more help and confidence to the blinds. For example, guide dogs is an animal, and we are putting in place policies that will facilitate their boarding onto vehicles of public transportation even airplanes. So that we are also converging ourselves to international practice in this regards, which is something very good.

Beijing Daily

I have lots of questions. First, for the aged and disabled, we have the largest number of them in China. In Japan, there is a yearly expo of this kind, of care and rehab. In China, are we going to institutionalize this kind of expo in the future? Second, we've talked about the manufacturing and application of assistive devices, which feature a gap with international standard. Would you share more about the statues quo of those products in China? And during the Expo this year, do you have preferential policies to incentivize the R&D of the manufacture of those assistive products so that the entire industry can be ramped up. Could you talk about wow can we visit the Expo free of charge including free transportation?