Contrasting quality of services in China and EU show need for mutual learning

After being a foreign correspondent for China Daily for 16 years, I returned home a week ago and began adjusting to life in the fast-changing metropolis of Shanghai. Just a day after my arrival, I received a call from a delivery man asking me whether I would mind if he delivered a parcel a few minutes later than scheduled.

"No problem," I said, soon realizing that he could be penalized by his company for being even slightly late.

Delivery personnel whizzing past vehicles on their e-bikes, despite the scorching temperatures in summer, torrential rain during monsoon and freezing cold in winter, are a common sight in Shanghai and other Chinese cities. They exemplify the diligence of ordinary Chinese workers.

But their working conditions should be improved, not least because they have made life convenient for nearly 25 million Shanghai residents. Meituan and Ele.me, two of the largest food delivery platforms, together boast more than 11 million employees, many of them part-time workers. That is like the entire population of Belgium.

My experience with courier companies in Brussels, especially Amazon Germany and Amazon Belgium, was often nightmarish. I had no clue when exactly the deliveryman would arrive. Waiting at home for half a day for a parcel to arrive, at times I received a message or two, saying the "delivery attempt" failed because there was no one at home. Clearly, the courier companies are not held to account for their lousy service.

In contrast, the courier service in China is efficient to the other extreme. I believe a balance should be found between the courier services in the European Union and China. Chinese delivery personnel should slow down a bit while those in the EU improve.

The same is true for the healthcare system. I've been a beneficiary of the excellent Belgian medical system for seven years. Doctors and nurses were very professional and the cost was quite low thanks to the mutual medical insurance plan. But fixing an appointment with a doctor was sometimes not easy. Two weeks before my departure from Brussels, I was trying to get an ultrasound test done, as recommended by my doctor. Unfortunately, the next available date was late August in one place and September in another.

So I had to wait for the ultrasound till I returned home. In Shanghai, I got it done within one hour of reaching a hospital on Monday, and that too without an appointment, but after seeing a doctor. All is well, thank God.

There is no doubt that, overall, Belgians enjoy a far better healthcare system than the average Chinese given the huge gap between the medical services in big cities and smaller cities and the vast Chinese countryside.

The next day, I got up early to undergo a thorough medical checkup in a local hospital. Chinese companies usually have provisions for annual medical checkup for their employees. But such one-stop service is hard to find in the United States or the EU, the two places where I served as China Daily's foreign correspondent for 16 years. Such preventive medical services are necessary for the early detection of a disease or potential health problem.

My checklist after arriving in Shanghai is shrinking fast, with an important remaining task being exchanging my Belgian driver's license for a Chinese one. My Chinese driver's license expired years ago. According to a bilateral agreement between Belgium and China, I can exchange my Belgian driver's license for a Chinese driver's license without taking any test. That's how I got my Belgian driver's license years ago. But all online information suggests that I still have to write a test in Shanghai, which could take days to prepare for, because I need to score at least 90 percent to qualify for a driver's license.

I hope the information available online applies to countries other than Belgium, which is one of the few EU countries to have bilateral agreements with China.

The comparisons are not to criticize the EU or Belgium, but to learn from each other and make things better.

The author is a China Daily columnist and senior correspondent.