I received a gift from the Shanghai government yesterday. A small plastic spoon designed to help moderate people’s salt intake for health benefits. The spoon holds 2 grams of salt. On the package it advises that 3 spoons of salt a day keeps the doctors away. (well, not the second part). So now every Shanghai resident can measure and try to stick to the 6 gram optimal intake. I find it to be a very good preventive measure, also a delightful surprise that epitomizes the shifting paradigm of policy making in China, which is in general more long term thinking and humanistic.

The salt spoon also reminds me of an episode of Open Source, in which a political professor said policy design has a lot to learn from product design. The latter inherently ackowledges human flaws and irrationalities, therefore is designed around those to avoid likely pitfalls. Take a spoon for an example, its shape and material are selected to give us convenience and safety. Policy making on the other hand largely assumes intelligence and rationality of human being, which explains a lot failed results. The subprime fiasco offers a good example. The spoon seems like a case of the merge of product and policy design; An example of China’s improving policy making. But some things such as awkward slogans change more slowly. The package also proudly reads ‘healthy Shanghai World Expo, healthy Shanghai.’