Globalization means more than trade - ask our NHS

President Xi Jinping had China's economic might and trade potential in mind during recent landmark speeches lauding and embracing globalization - but there's another side to the concept, and that involves people.

I'm coming to the end of a 10-day stay in Guy's Hospital, one of Britain's leading hospitals. It has given me an insight as to how the National Health Service, conceived as part of the welfare state in the wake of World War II, works.

The NHS is the world's fifth-largest employer, with 1.7 million workers, and sees more than 1 million patients every 36 hours. Staggering.

What makes it tick? Well, let's put it this way. In the days I have been here (for a series of tests, no big deal) I have been treated by people from China, Slovakia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, Spain, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, various Caribbean nations, and even an American. Plus assorted British folk, of course.

My point is this: Without exception they are competent, cheerful and seriously happy doing a job that needs a human touch. When you are lying in a hospital bed at the mercy of the professionals, trust me, that matters a lot.

One estimate, from the respected Nuffield Trust, reckons 55,000 NHS staff are from non-UK countries in the EU, and the same number again are from countries outside the EU.

So, culturally and racist divisive talk from small-minded xenophobes risks massive damage to modern, multicultural Britain.

Of course, like the NHS, it's by no means perfect. But we have to work at it - as someone once said, it is what it is, and we have to deal with it. And most of us are.

If, as the xenophobes want, all foreign workers were excluded, then the NHS would collapse. Not sure if anybody wants that.

It has its faults. Accident and emergency departments are under massive strain, in part because access to GP surgeries has become harder. But some NHS trusts are experimenting with a triage system, whereby initial medical assessments are made by qualified medics. The results, so far, are good.

The other bone of contention is the layer of managerial employees, in particular the cost.

How can it be justified that an NHS trust chief executive can earn twice as much as the prime minister, who is on 150,000 ($182,100; 171,300 euros) a year? The argument is that you have to pay the going rate for a CEO simply doesn't wash with me. The NHS is not a business, it's a social service for which people pay around 150 to 200 a month in National Insurance contributions.

Earlier this year, it was reported that China, eager to remodel its own health service, has joined an NHS task force to examine collaboration possibilities.

Knowing China as I do, I'm pretty sure it will go for the best bits.

Chris Peterson is managing editor, Europe, for China Daily. Contact him at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 03/17/2017 page11)